Lacrifill was a miss
My doctor was recommending collagen punctual plugs but the thought of having something permanently in my eye scared me. I decided to go the Lacrifill route which is supposed to have no downtime and be well tolerated.
The Lacrifill "procedure" (if you can even call it that) is super quick and painless. Immediately afterwards I felt some moisture in my eye and had some excessive tearing for the remainder of the day! I woke up on Saturday and my eye still felt moisturized! On Sunday I started noticing a scratchy sensation in the corner of my eye which was aggravated every time I blinked. I reached out to my doctor on Monday and they said that it usually doesn't happen and that it should go away. Well.... it only got worse. I started panicking because it hurt every time I blinked and I felt like I just made my eye 10x worse. I work on a computer and it was agonizing sitting there and feeling like something was scratching my eye.
I went for a follow-up on Tuesday and they confirmed I had a lot of inflammation and put me on Loteprednol. I've used this a handful of times and it always works well for me - but this time it wasn't even touching the sensation. I think my puncta really did NOT like having a foreign material in it.
About a week later, I couldn't take it anymore and decided to have it dissolved. The dissolving immediately reduced a lot of the sensation, but I still had a lot of irritation/inflammation and decided to do a steroid taper for a few weeks.
When I left the dr. office they said it might bother me for a few days and then I'd be back to normal, but it took a good 2-3 weeks for that area to even feel normal again (while taking the steroid). Around week 3 I was feeling confident and decided to put in contacts. It totally brought back the sensation and the more research I do suggests that the puncta (especially if dilated, which mine was) takes 4-6 weeks(!!) to heal.
I couldn't find any stories online about getting it dissolved, so just wanted to share!