The Eyes Have It

Donna Moss: Josh, this was delievered by messenger.
Josh Lyman: What is it?
Donna: It's... wait, wait, no, damn. My X-ray vision is failing me today.
Josh: Gimme that!

—The West Wing, "The Leadership Breakfast" (1/10/01)

-----------------------------------------------

That's not my eye over there but it's the same color. Nice, yes? I rather like my eye color. My favorite part is the way they seem to change color from time to time. Sometimes they're more like brown, other times they're definitely leaning toward green.

Daughter doesn't have my eye color, which is sad. On the bright side, she does have this steel blue that she seems to have gotten from my grandmother. A quick Google image search doesn't turn up much, so I'll have to take a digital pic of her and blow up the eye, sometime. Anyway. 

A couple of weeks ago I went to get my eyes checked as part of the biannual thing. And, it's official: I get to wear glasses on a full-time basis. Not that I wasn't doing that anyway.

I'm abnormally rough on my glasses. I push them up on my forehead, then grab them by the lenses to bring them back down, then wonder why I can't see. What's a few fingerprints, anyway? I've dropped them, lost them, chipped them...the only thing I haven't done with my current pair was bend them out of shape, and that's because I sprung for frames that are made of some space-age polymer. I don't think you CAN bend them enough that they'd remain misshapen. But I do have these glasses with the scratched lenses and the chip from when they fell off my face at the Pig Roast last May...it's just sad.

So, since I'm such an irresponsible glasses-wearer, I asked the doctor if I could get contacts. Last time he was resistant because I wasn't supposed to be wearing them all the time. This time? No problem. He ordered a starter kit for me (freebie) and, if all was well, I could order a more permanent set.

For the uninitated: when you buy glasses, you wait a week or so and they call you in. You go, they put them on you and make sure they fit, and send you on your way. With contacts, when it's your first time, you have to go in and be trained in the ways of sticking stuff in your eye. And that was the first question she had for me: "Are you comfortable putting your finger in your eye?"

"Sure," I said. "I do it lots of times. Occasionally on purpose."

It took me over ten minutes to get the first lens in correctly, but I managed it. The process involves holding one eye wide open and basically pulling my upper eyelid outward and then down over the lens. I was told that it would feel as though I had a foreign object in my eye. (What! My lenses aren't made in America? Snerk.) In fact, it felt to me as though I had a stray eyelash bugging me. The left eye didn't take quite as long but it still wasn't easy at first. Then I had to take them out again for her benefit, to show that I could do it.

For today, I was told to wear them for four hours .Naturally, as that mark passed I wasn't in a position to take them out, so they were in for nearly five. I took them out around 8:30 and my left eyeball is still a little sore. Tomorrow they should be in for five hours (maybe I can go six, since I already did five?), and so on until I can wear them all the time, except when I'm sleeping at night.

So here I am, one with the Contact Lens Nation. So far, so good.

Comments

[danielle]

Welcome to the club! I've been wearing contacts since high school (glasses since ele. school) and those were hard lenses. Those hurt. You'll be accustomed to these in no time and able to just pop them in or out.

[yellojkt]

I don't want to stick things in my eyes. I'll stick to specs.