The other day I noticed something weird was going on with my vision. First there was irritation for several hours after I took out my contacts. That’s nothing unusual, though it persisted longer than usual. Then a day or so later my eye became rather blurry and I had no idea why. It was as though my eye were fogged up. Foggy vision was not unusual because the cold weather makes my glasses fog up. But the fogging persisted whether I was wearing glasses or not. Clancy had to drive us to our T-Day dinner.
It got better over the course of that evening, but then got worse again the next day. Then the pain returned. It was a familiar pain. The pain of having a contact lense folded somewhere beneath the lid. Except I wasn’t wearing a contact, was I? Sure, I’d lost my right-eye contact when I was taking it out, but that wasn’t unusual. But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed that the contact must be in my eye somewhere. It’s been known to cause blurriness before, though not in quite this way (usually blurriness in the upper part of the eye where my eyeball was eclipsed by the lens).
I went through the usual steps, though the contact was nowhere to be seen no matter how much I peeled my eyelids back or pulled my skin around. It was several rounds later when I determined that it was in there and must have been folded twice over. Since the blurry vision as not come back, I assume that was the cause of it one way or another. Mystery solved, though the fact that I had the thing tucked away in my lid for three days or so without noticing is unusual. I guess my discomfort threshold is increasing as usually it takes only a few hours before I can’t take it anymore.
This same thing happened to me a few years ago. Most irritatingly, it happened while I was away from home, visiting a friend in another city and with no spare lenses around; the folded-up thing finally popped out of my eye three days later. I guess it’s surprising how much punishment one’s eye can really take.
Comment by Transplanted Lawyer — November 29, 2010 @ 5:54 pm
I try to make sure that I always have glasses with me whenever I travel with my contacts. Since I wear my contacts so irregularly, it’s not all that hard to. If I wore them more regularly, I’d probably keep an old pair of glasses in the car.
I read somewhere that eyes are among the most quickly resilient part of the party (Clancy can verify/dispute this). Makes sense, when you think about it. They’re tender, but so important that they need to recover quickly.
Comment by trumwill — November 29, 2010 @ 7:31 pm
Have you looked into laser-eye surgery?
I am to much of a wussy for it…
Comment by Mike Hunt — November 30, 2010 @ 7:53 pm
They are saying now that melatonin may halt macular degeneration:
http://altmedicine.about.com/b/2010/11/25/melatonin-for-macular-degeneration.htm
Well, probably not really a concern for your age group, but definitely for mine.
Comment by Maria — December 2, 2010 @ 12:51 pm