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I would wear the eye patch. I had an eye infection (looked like pink eye but it wasn't) and I got way less comments about the patch than when I went without it. I used the stick on eye patches as opposed to the black pirate looking one though.

I guess I'd be prepared with an eye patch and if your eye isn't looking TOO bad, I'd skip it. Maybe if you have the patch on, people will assume it's an eye injury or surgery recovery or something, instead of a virus, and not ask you questions hehe.

I would do the eye patch and hope people don't ask questions (and since they haven't met you before, they won't know anything is out of the ordinary).

@Mrs. Tiger: I used a eye patch they sell at any old pharmacy. There were white ones and beige bandaid ones.

Have to agree that the patch will be less distracting. If it was regular work with people you saw all the time I'd skip it, but you don't want people to remember you as the pink eye lady. With the patch they'll prob be too polite to mention it

Eye patch is less distracting for sure!

Totally eye patch. As a complete germaphobe, if I saw your pink eye I would assume that you were just ignoring it and were passing it on to everybody. With an eye patch I know you are aware you got something going on and are dealing with it

I agree- eye patch. If I just saw the oozy eye I would be worried about catching it, no matter how careful you were. also most people will be too polite to mention it.

@Mrs. Tiger: I think your poll is confusing- the title says which is more distracting, but the question says what would you do. Maybe that's why?

Fwiw I would assume someone wearing a patch had a scratched cornea or something like that. But wouldn't ask.

You may want to check with your eye doctor to see if an eye patch is okay. Sometimes patches can make infections worse, so if you haven't already, I'd ask just to make sure! It may make your decision easier. If you already did, sorry for butting in

This is a terrible situation. Pink eye evokes all sorts of dorm room horror for me. But as long as you don't have crusty nasty stuff hanging off of your eye, I wouldn't wear an eye patch. If you have to go on the trip, and people already know you have pink eye, just be very apologetic and carry all sorts of hand wipes and antibacterial creams and be sure to let people see you using them. Hopefully it will get a little better over the weekend. Doesn't pink eye usually only last for a few days? When its just red, you can claim contact lens infection. Sucks all around. So sorry.

Having just dealt with this, I wanted to weigh in. I had (bacterial) pink eye for eight weeks. My eye was watering a lot, sometimes it hurt, and it definitely was red and itchy, but I did not wear an eye patch. Could they give you something like Zylet? It's an antibiotic/steroid drop and it would help take care of the redness.

Pinkeye is the devil. I'm so sorry you are going through this and I hope it clears soon!

@Mrs. Tiger: Steroids and contacts are bad news, but I'm surprised you are still allowed to wear them! The first thing my eye doctor said was no contacts for the duration of the infection (not a problem because I don't wear them).

@Mrs. Tiger: Over the course of six weeks, I was on Zylet (steroid/antibiotic), Pazeo (allergy drop), and Lotemax (steroid eye drop). Straight steroids aren't good because they mask an eye infection, and Lotemax says not to use it if there is an active infection. What finally worked for me was a strong antibiotic called Oflaxcin.

I know yours is viral, but that's everything that was in my eye for eight weeks. Oh! They had me cleaning my eye with Blephadex wipes too. It was soothing and helped get rid of the gunk.

I had viral pinkeye once and they gave me the Zylet then too.