GREENSBORO, N.C. — If you wake up one morning and your eye is red, painful or itchy, it could be conjunctivitis, commonly known as pink eye.
This happened to WFMY's Stacey Spivey recently and her doctor said she's seen an increase in cases of pink eye.
Chelle Jeffrey is a physician assistant for Novant Health. She said while her practice isn't seeing a surge, she's not surprised that it's going around.
"Bacteria that cause pink eye are the same bacteria (I) would say cause a sinus infection," Jeffrey said. "So as we're entering the winter months, people are inside more. People may be having more sinus infections. It may be easier then to develop and transmit pink eye."
Pink eye is highly contagious. Jeffrey said the gross myths you've probably heard about how you can get pink eye aren't true.
"You can pick it up really anywhere and if you touch your eye, you could put the bacteria in your eye," Jeffrey said. "So washing your hands very frequently, especially before you do anything with your eyes."
Jeffrey is referring to the bacterial kind, but there's actually more than one kind of pink eye.
The bacterial kind is very contagious and Jeffrey said you usually have puss draining from the eye. Doctors usually prescribe antibiotic eye drops for the bacterial kind.
There's also viral and allergic conjunctivitis.
Jeffrey said the viral one must run its course and allergy medicine usually helps the allergic kind.