About two years or so ago I started to get eye infections which is something that I had never really had a problem with before other than the usual itchy sore eyes from wearing contacts. One night I went to bed with a really itchy eye and the next morning I woke up with it swollen and double it's normal size.
The tissue surrounding my eye was very tender to the touch and was so swollen that I had trouble seeing out of it. The most roubling ascpet for me was that they were also producing a horrible yellow discharge.

Obviously since I had never had an eye infection of this magnitude before I freaked out a little. After managing to convince the receptionist at the GP surgery to give me an emergency appointment I got in to see my GP who informed me it was a relatively common form of conjunctivitus which would clear up quite quickly with some medication. He wrote me a prescription and away I went to the chemist to collect it.

The prescription was for an ointment called Golden Eye. The ointment comes in a little tube which is only very small weighing 4 grams. You just need to apply the ointment to the eye 3 or 4 times daily and the infection should be cleared up within 5 days.

As my infection was centered around my tear duct I found applying the ointment pretty easy and I just squeezed a little on to a cotton bud and applied. I would be weary to put the actual tube near my eye not only in case it hurt but also in case I happened to spread the infection but the instructions do say to pull your lower eyelid down and apply 1cm of ointment to the space between the lower eyelid and eye.

The ointment is exactly that a thick yellow substance that is definatley more cream than drops and when you put it on your eye and blink a few times the ointment will spread a bit getting to work in fighting the infection. The ointment does cause a little blurring of the eye but I didn't find it stung or caused any other discomfort whatsoever.

I applied the ointment religiously and within the first 24 hours I already noticed an improvement. My eye was still really swollen and tender to the touch but the discharge was most definately less and within a couple of days the swelling started to come down and it no longer looked or felt so painful and tender.
Within the five days my eye had more or less completely cleared up with only a little residual swelling left but the actual infection was gone.

I was amazed with just how effective this ointment was. Although my eye infection was supposed to be quite common it certainly didn't feel or look like it was and I had expected a longer wait before I would see some improvement so I was pleasantly surprised that on day three although I still had the infection I felt I could go out in public again without people staring. It was also really easy to use and side effects for me were absolutely zero.

Even though I had never had an eye infection about six months later I got the exact same thing but this time in the other eye. I didn't bother going to the doctor this time and bought my Golden Eye ointment direct from the pharmasists instead and again it cleared up the infection in a speedy time.

A tube of Golden eye ointment will set you back around £5.50 for a 4g tube but this small tube will be more than enough to deal with an infection. You are supposed to discard the tube after your course so make sure you do as you don't want anything that has been opened for weeks or months near your eye.
The active ingredient is: 1% Chloramphenicol and you must not use the ointment if you are pregnant or breastfeeding. You must also not use contact lenses for at least 24 hours after you have finshed your course of treatment.