something on my eye

[hollywould]

If had something on my eye for years. I've heard from some people, and some general practitioners that it's a calcium build up that can be scraped off by an optomitrist. SCRAPED OFF MY EYE!? it's small (maybe a millimeter wide, and 2 mm long), white-ish in color, just inside the blue part of only my left eye. It's never bothered me before, it's not painful now. But my left eye has been chronically bloodshot for the last 6 months, sometimes grotesquely so. What is this thing? How do I get rid of it(if there are any other ways of getting rid of it, other than having it scraped off) ? And will it come back if I get rid of it?

[John C Hagan III, MD, FACS]

You need to see a Eye MD physician (ophthalmologist) not a limited scope, non-physician optometrist.

Most likely the bump is a pingueculum (usually due to sunlight damage or chronic rubbing by a contact lens).

The ophthalmologist MD can make a proper diagnosis and usually give drops to quiet the redness and inflammation down. Surgery is not normally necessary.

This is different than a pterygium where the tissue grows over the cornea and sometimes needs to be surgically removed. Use Google Image and type in these two terms and you can see pictures.

JCH III MD Eye MD