torqueandpower

Hello everyone!
I have never really had problems before with my eyes, so I am really looking for some advice here. I wear contacts- remove every night. Last week my right eye starting bothering me- it felt like my contact was dried out and irritated. I left it in-stupidly. Even worse, I put it back in the next morning. My eye started to feel like I had an eyelash- started to develop light sensitivty and it turned red. I took the contacts out switched to glasses. Next day, really bad light sensitivity in that eye-almost like a stabbing pain. Really sore eye, like my whole socket, just achy. It turned pretty red. Motrin seemed to help with the grittiness.
Went to the docs last Friday- they said I had inflamation in my eye. They didnt see anything else going on, including no scratches. We had steroid drops, so she told me I could use them 1dropx4 per day. The redness went down quite a bit, still really sore though. Woke up about 2am today, with what felt like an eyelash in my eye- I wouldnt touch or rub it because I was so afraid of making it worse. I took motrin, and the pain went away. Back to the docs today. My eye is still inflamed, but not as bad, redness had decreased quite abit. Because she wanted to see more progress, she put me on a different steroid- same amount.
Question is: even though its getting better, and less red, how long should is stay sore/achy for? I guess it feels dry or something. Ive never experienced this before, so its hard to put into words.
Im sorry this is so long!! Thank you for helping:-)