Poke me in the eye

I just read a funny, witty post by Joanna about contact lenses and the problems she has wearing them.

For weeks, I've been wishing I could wear my own contacts. (I'm one of those people whose eyes actually feel better with contacts in than out; in fact, I adore my Focus Night and Day contacts because I get to wear them for 30 days AND nights before removing them. That's right--I can actually sleep in them! For a month! And my eye doctor doesn't yell at me for it!) But I haven't been able to wear them since the day after Christmas.

That day, I somehow developed pink eye. Hadn't even been around anyone who had it, as far as I knew. Since I was out of town, I paged my eye doctor, and she called in an antibiotic eyedrop prescription. A few hours after the first dose, my eyes were worse. Way worse. Oozing and itching. I thought: duh! Twice before, I'd had allergic reactions to eye medicines. And I'd forgotten to remind my doctor this time, and since she was off for the holiday, she didn't have access to my chart...

So she switched me to another antibiotic. Same problem. Only by now, I wanted to scratch my eyes out of my head. Finally, a third antibiotic and a steroid prescription cleared it up.

But I wasn't supposed to wear my contacts for two weeks.

I *hate* wearing glasses. It's not about how I look in them. It's about how my eyes feel when I wear them: like every little dust particle is directly assaulting them. And it's about how impaired my vision seems when I wear glasses: like I have no peripheral vision at all.

So yesterday was the day I could finally wear my beloved contacts again. Hooray!

But.

Last night, I rubbed my right eye. Suddenly, my vision was blurred. Dammit. I'd pushed my lens out of place, and it'd gotten lodged way up under my eyelid. I tried for like 20 minutes to get it out. Tried everything, even putting my finger against my bare eyeball (which totally doesn't bother me, by the way) and pulling the top lid over the bottom lid to force my eyes to water. No luck.

So I went to bed. The eye didn't hurt, really. Just felt irritated.

I put the glasses back on this morning, called the doctor's office, and made a 1:30 appointment. I went to work, and I mentioned to my second class that I had a contact lens stuck up under my eyelid. Some of my students were visibly grossed out. One guy shuddered. One woman said, "Oh my god, that happened to me once, and they had to put a huge suction cup over my eyeball, and it hurt for three days.

"You're gonna have to cancel class tomorrow."

I went to my 1:30 appointment, and my doctor said, "Hmm. I don't see anything. You sure the lens didn't come out on its own?"

I told her I was pretty sure it hadn't.

She said, "Okay, look down. I'm gonna flip your eyelid inside out."

I didn't even flinch. (What can I say? My eyes really DO feel better with foreign objects in them.)

And then the doc said: "Aha! There it is...waaay up there. Come on, come on....

"I got it!! Man, it was UP there. There's no way you could've gotten that out yourself. A fifth-grade boy who can flip his own eyelids inside out might've been able to do it...but I've never known a female who could do it."

(Huh? How odd is that? I hadn't even flinched.)

So then I told her my student's suction cup story. She laughed. And said that, yes indeed, they really do use a suction cup sometimes, but only on gas permeable lenses. And then she showed me the suction cup. It looked like a golf tee. I could take it.

The doctor didn't charge me for today's procedure. She said my eyes had endured enough over the past few weeks.

All I care about is...tomorrow!

Tomorrow, I'm back to my 30-day lenses. Ahh, they'll feel so good.