I know you’re all waiting with bated breath for contact lens news, so here’s my update: I took my second class and I’m doing fine. I have to say, at one point, my feet felt like they were in a weird Hunger Games, especially as I clamped my eyelids firmly with one set of fingers and wiped my eyeballs over and over with the other. Watching all this happening in the mirror added to the trauma.
Even though my contact lens mentor (my goodness, this has got to be one of the most frustrating jobs in the world) was as calm and patient as an FBI negotiator, I still had moments where I had to do a reality check and wonder why I would voluntarily self-sabotage my own eye comfort and well-being.
My eyeballs have been doing pretty well in life so far, thank you very much, except for the one time I nearly blinded myself trying to snap a small tree* in half by bending the (still planted) trunk and jumping on it, while I was drawing back their cozy protective curtains and repeatedly poking and pulling at their bare jelly flesh. They were never touched, not even in childhood, because in the eighties everyone knew that if you touched your eyeballs, you’d go blind.
(It’s like the fabled quicksand you have to avoid – it was one of my major childhood anxieties – don’t swallow Hubba Bubba because it will form a big ball in your appendix and you’ll die. You no way In the eighties, you would touch your eyeballs, unless you were one of those crazy kids who would also run their fingers briefly through the flame of a lighter or pinch a candle wick to snuff it out. wilderness. )
Anyway: poor, virginal eyes, snapped open, enduring a total sensory nightmare. Especially since I was in charge of the whole process, I was the most incompetent shot handler in the world. Other than my hands shaking like someone strapped to a washing machine set on a perpetual spin cycle, I just couldn’t get the right conditions. My fingertips are so wet, the contact lenses are getting too dry, and the damn thing is either upside down, flipped over, or folded up like a burrito…
You’ll be glad to know I succeeded though. After dangling the moist disc in front of my eyeball for about nine hours, it finally lost patience and dropped it from my fingertip to the surface of my eye, sucking hard and making its presence felt immediately.
The second was easier when the lovely mentor suggested that I try some changes in my standing position. I almost made a joke about labor, but I don’t think this is the time. He’s only one: his patience must have a limit. But it does slide in easier, so maybe standing is the best position going forward? who knows.Some people obviously like to hang it by the bed and put a mirror over the bed ground Beneath them, it sounds pretty dangerous if you ask me, but who am I to judge? Who knows what creative approaches I’ll take once I get down to it.
Find out about my first contact lens experience…
After wearing two contact lenses exist, time to take them out again – this is where everything went wrong the previous week. I relaxed a little the second time around, getting used to the sensation of holding an invisible disc of barely there gel over my eyeball and moving it side to side. This time I looked in the mirror and watched the lens move to the side and I could see where the lens was creased – it was tricky to grasp with long fingernails as you have to use the side of your finger (otherwise you scratch your eye, which is bad), but after 500 or so tries I finally succeeded.
I actually suspect my eye just goes “oh my god” and expels the lens itself because it gets so tired of poking around, but we’ll never be able to be sure.
So, I put both lenses in, I took both lenses out, and guess what I had to do? Put the damn thing back on! And I’m a lot faster. I don’t think I have less than ten minutes per eye because I have to account for breathing time, angrily kicking the wall time, and regular motivational speeches from my mentor, but I do. I wore them for three hours and was almost used to the strange feeling of them just being there, sitting on my balls, and that was it.
However, months have passed and I can’t yet say that I and my contacts are really consistent. (Sorry.) It’s not really a matter of putting them in and out because that would be faster, more of them not really solving my problem. I just want the vision of full, seamless, no visible panty lines. I want to be able to see, do everything, but not have to actively make seeing happen.
I don’t want to wear the on-and-off cumbersome pair of glasses I need for walking, one for driving, and about three stacked for reading; but I also can’t wear contact lenses, and I have to remember to take them off if I need to take a nap (surprisingly often), and I can’t wear them to the shower after exercising, but I need to wear them arrive exercise…
This just adds to the complexity. lens. For some reason, I find the monthly fee cumbersome, even though I have direct billing for Apple TV, internet storage, Google Workspace and Spotify and various other things. Forget canceled holiday auto excess insurance etc I don’t know. They just don’t work for me.
but what used to be will it suit me? Excellent. Please hold on, because there is a marathon eye whistle coming up…
*It’s an invasive thing that needs to come out and I’m too lazy to reach for a shovel so I thought bending the trunk and stomping on it with both feet would be an amazing low effort option. It didn’t, I very very nearly lost an eye.
