Scary eye problems

I'm a 21 year old female who is nearsighted, have been wearing glasses since 2002, also I had a chalazion about 6 years ago that had to be injected with steroids to get rid of.
I'm not sure when the symptoms started, but they have definitely become more noticeable and troublesome over the past 6 months. When I wake up in the morning, there is the usual crustiness around both of my eyes, but they are also very blurry, to the point where I have to go straight into the bathroom in order to fix the problem. There is a film of clear, sometimes white, slime/liquid splashed across my eyes. I have to rub them to bring the liquid to the bottom of my eyelids so I can gently scrape it off. Throughout the day this symptom returns, making it feel as though I am looking out of a film and I have to repeat the same process from the morning. Sometimes my eyes randomly start burning and stinging and at times it feels as though something is in my eye, but I can never get it out.  

Another symptom is seeing starburst around lights. During the day: the room lights, or bright lights from the computer/t.v cast rays. The center of the light becomes magnified and there are rays shooting from all directions, like a multi-pointed star. It's worse without my glasses, but still annoyingly present with them. I have to avoid looking at them directly otherwise it irritates my eyes. However during the night it's worse. Street lamps, headlights, traffic lights, they all expand and take up my vision, making it near impossible to see the road at night.

A random, maybe unrelated symptom is distinguishing colors against colors. At school when a teacher writes on the board, even with my glasses, it's hard for certain colors to stand out against the white. I notice that with any combination of colors (except for white writing on a dark background or black writing on a white background), the edges of the words kind of blur into the color it's written on. Also sometimes my eyes lose focus. Like if you've been staring at something for a while and you aren't really taking in what you see. This happens to me sometimes even if I've only been staring at something for a few seconds.  

I'm not sure what's going on with my vision. I read all the time, constantly, and I never use my glasses when I do because I don't need them to see the text. I don't wear eye make-up since these problems have started, and I try not to put any unnecessary strain on them. Nothing is working. I don't have insurance so I just wanted to find out did anyone have some advice or an opinion as to what may be the problem. I haven't been able to find anything that matches all my symptoms except for this extremely rare and scary thing called Fuch's Dystrophy, but it doesn't even fit my age bracket. Hoping that it's nothing too serious, but worried that it is, so fingers crossed that someone can tell me something. Thanks.

[John C Hagan III, MD, FACS, FAAO]

You have multiple problems and its unlikely that one single thing is causing all  your symptoms. I would suggest you see an Eye MD ophthalmologist ideally with a specialty of cornea/external disease.

Fuch's corneal dystrophy isn't that rare but would not cause all those symptoms.

JCH MD