The Valsalva Maneuver

 Weird shit happens.  Right?  So this is a photo of my eyelid looking like I'm a make-up artist experimenting with black and blue eyeshadow.  And yet, it's my right eyelid sans makeup.  I was like, ok, weird until it happened on the other eyelid. When that happened, I googled it and e-mailed my doctor.  My doctor was not worried but said she could see me in a day or two if they didn't resolve. After googling I wondered if it was due to intense neti pot use?  I have been going out more to the gym and such and flush my nostrils when I get home.  Too much pressure there?  I wondered because my friend and one loyal reader of this blog, vomited so severely she detached her retina.  This shit happens.  No.  The doctor said, unlikely neti pot was the cause.  Was it the daily baby aspirin I take, prescribed my neuroeye guy due to creepy double-vision problems I had a year and a half ago?  No.  Doctor advised me to stay on the aspirin.  But then I remembered that I have been washing my face a lot, along with neti potting when I come home, particularly from the gym.  Vigorous eye rubbing?  Possibly.  Our skin thins as we age.  I remember seeing bruises on my dad's arms and wondering if he had taken up boxing at the age of 88.  There is, of course, a big name for this, Echomosis.  A bruise.  One website I stopped on, Diverseyachtclub.org (an eye authority for sure) told me that if I sneezed or coughed aggressively or laughed intensely like I'd just seen the funniest thing in my life, I could rupture a blood vessel in my eyeball.  Which has nothing to due with my bruised eyelid.  On patientcareonline.com they had a picture of a 64 year old woman's eyelids that looked a lot like mine.   Her echomosis was supposedly caused by the Valsalva maneuver.  The what?  Strained bowel movements.  Like an idiot I kept googling to find pictures that gave me nightmares of people with huge spontaneous subcutaneous bleeds that wrapped around their chin, all around their eyes and on/or it covered 1/2 their face.  And then I got sidetracked reading about stigmata.  Oh the places I go on the internet.  Thankfully, my blood, previously seeping from little capillaries that usually nourish my eyelids, is returning home, absorbed and no longer making me look like I was the loser in a fist fight.  Going forward I will gently cleanse my eyelids.  I will mind the intensity of my coughing and laughing and never, never, do the Valsalva maneuver.