It’s easy to take your health for granted when traveling. Especially when the most extreme sport on your agenda involves hopping onto a massage table. Sure, an occasional cold might disrupt a day or two. Or maybe a case of Montezuma’s Revenge puts a damper on plans. But an injury? Not so much.

So I was surprised last week when, while answering accumulated emails before turning out the lights for the night, I felt an extraordinary burst of pain shoot through my left eye. It was like someone was scraping an emery board across my eyeball. Allergies? Maybe, but it was only one eye. Still, I downed a Benadryl and tried to sleep. 

By the next morning, the pain had morphed into a complex roster of symptoms including swelling, blurry vision, light sensitivity, excessive tears — even a gentle breeze across my face left me doubled over.

I was at the St. Regis Bahia Beach Resort & Spa in Puerto Rico. Happily, the hotel has a doctor on call. I checked with my insurance company to be sure I was following proper procedure and waited for the doctor to arrive.  He was at my hotel room within an hour. The diagnosis? A corneal abrasion. I have no idea how the injury happened, but apparently that’s not unusual. It can sometimes take hours for symptoms of the injury to manifest.

The doctor did a thorough exam before providing me with eye drops to numb the pain and antibiotic ointment to ward off complications like an infection. The tally for the house call with an exam and medications? $175.

— Lisa Matte, editor in chief