Sore puffy eyes plus REALLY sore facial skin

[Varekai72]

ey can anyone help with this? I wake up in the morning with puffy eyes that become sore and red around their periphery and the soreness spreads to my cheeks and a little bit on my forehead. The soreness on one of my cheeks is a little raised. And it feels just like sunburn and looks absolutely terrible! I only leave the house to go to work - it's really depressing. My facial skin is so dehydrated I have to moisturise every half hour or so (I use Nivea - it cools and is one of the few things I've found that doesn't sting - I got an organic Aloe Vera cream & even that stung, as did E45 and Sudocream). I had perioral dermatitis last year and was given a three month course of oral antibiotics (which worked and got rid of it) & the derm told me that I had got it from overuse of corticosteroid creams on the face (which I had been given for eczema, something I have had since childhood but only a tiny bit around the mouth as an adult). What I have now is not the same thing as the perioral dermatitis had little red marks in it whereas this is more like really dry, dehydrated, skin like parchment and looks blotchy. And it always seems to occur in conjunction with the puffy eyes. My eyes seem to water a lot and are sore at the outer corners and have a small amount of white discharge all the time at the centre. It's not an eye infection though. I asked for an ophthalmology referral but my GP said she couldn't give me one as my eyes were 'clear'. Sometimes I can pull reams of white stringy stuff out of them though. Can anyone help?  I have tried artificial tears but no joy with those. This all started late June and the flare-ups are increasing in number and duration and I don't know what to do any more! The stringy stuff doesn't bother me so much as my sore skin - I got sent home from work today I looked so bad! It's wearing me out too - only had 3 hours sleep last night my face was burning so much :( Please help if you can?!

[Varekai72]

As I posted above, my GP won't refer me to an ophthalmologist as she says my eyes themselves are 'clear'.............
Thanks yarrow but I am already on antibiotics, which is what my GP gave me when I went in with the skin problem as it is what I was given last year for the PD. This time they are not making any difference though :(

[yarrow]

Just this summer, I experienced some of the skin problems you describe: redness of the cheeks and a nasty, nasty burning sensation, a lot like sunburn that wouldn't go away.  Finally, I went to a dermatologist, and it turned out that I have a kind of skin inflammation called rosacea.  The doc gave me a cream to put on it, as well as some low-dose antibiotics--and my skin quieted down and got almost normal pretty fast.   Here's some info to look at, to see if you might recognize any of the symptoms in yourself:

http://www.rosacea.org/index.php

You'll probably note in reading that rosacea can affect the eyes, and an eye doc should be able to tell you if that's what is going on with you.

[Sandra M Brown, MD]

You need to see an Eye MD.  Find one near you by looking on www.aao.org.