05-24-00
Today today today is a happy day because I get to go to the eye doctor. Most people probably wouldn't consider this an occasion worth celebration, but I have 'problem eyes' that are pissing me off at the moment. Let me explain...
When I was in high school, I refused to wear glasses because it wasn't cool. I had these really dorky [hey, they were cool-ish at the time] round pink glasses that I would only wear under the cover of darkness so I could take notes from the overhead and see the chalkboard. I would whip them on when no one was looking and then whip them back off as soon as they weren't needed. I also wore them to drive. My junior year of high school, I begged my mom to let me get contacts, and she finally acquiesced, but the deal was that I had to get semi-rigid gas permeables and not soft contacts because my cousin Suzy had a pair of soft contacts, didn't take care of them, got an eye infection and could never wear contacts ever again, and mom didn't want the same to happen to me.
Now, as an aside, I love my cousin Suzy. She's good people, but I have a feeling that in high school she was just about as scatterbrained as she is now. She's currently living in a co-op in the Bay Area with her fiance and like 15 other people, and teaches grade school science. She's an eccentric. She has also never had an eye infection related to the improper care of soft contacts. She apparently wears glasses because she doesn't like sticking her fingers in her eyes. My mother is fraudulent. But I love her too. [Hi mom!]
I ended up with gas permeable contacts that were the bane of my existence, and I refused to wear them because they not only hurt, but also made everything have strange "too much chlorine from the swimming pool" haloes around everything. It was like having freaky 3-D goggles on all the time. I think we should have gotten some kind of travel reward for all the trips we took to the opthamologist to work that one out. End result? Expensive things in a bag under the sink, Kristen still blind.
In college, I figured out that if I wore my glasses full time, I could actually see what was going on around me, and I wouldn't get any more unattractive squinting lines. I dabbled on and off with soft contacts, but mostly wore glasses until a couple of years ago.
The story of the Ciba Focus Disposable Contacts:
The optometrist at WalMart convinced me that what I needed more than anything else in the world was to be able to wear a pair of contacts for two months and then throw them away. He painted a magical picture where my eyes would be happy and healthy and would love me forever and ever, and I totally bought it because I am the target audience for all advertising and suggestive selling techniques. [DON'T GET ANY IDEAS!] And that was my first mistake.
For those of you not familiar with these technological breakthroughs, they are a slightly larger, super slimy, extremely fragile soft contact. I constantly tore them putting them in and taking them out of my eyes, oh and when I cleaned them, or was pretty much anywhere near them. I went through 7 pairs in about the space of 5 months, with the last pair actually causing me physical injury.
Imagine if you will, sitting in a product knowledge class, learning about why Sebastian Haircare is the best haircare line in the entire world. Now imagine that your left eye suddenly feels as though a meteorite has hurtled out of the sky, through the ceiling and into your eye. Painful, isn't it? Now imagine that your eye instantaneously fills with tears as you shoot up out of your seat and run to the bathroom as fast as you can to find and remove the meteorite. But there is no meteorite in your eye. There is instead several pieces of contact, the largest of which is firmly adhered to your cornea. In the process of removing the evil evil thing, you manage to scratch your cornea, and are forced to drive all the way back from Cedar Rapids with one eye swollen shut and seepy, the other eye trying to shut in sympathy. It makes for a fun drive. Now, imagine your doctor telling you that in order for your eye to heal, you have to wear a highly attractive fleshtone eye patch for three days. Imagine how all the laughter and stares feel. Try cutting hair with no depth perception, peripheral or stereo vision. Feel my pain.
While all of the ciba contacts I have ever had have torn or ripped or tried to kill me, none of them have been so vile as that fateful Focus contact. Which brings us to why I am visiting the eye doctor today. We had a Christmas party in late January for the Younkers store I work at. It was lame, I got drunk, and when I got home, I didn't so much take out my contacts and put them neatly in their case as take them out and put them on the grooved part of the case that holds the lid on. Needless to say, the next day I couldn't find contacts beyond two little saline-filled cups of shredded plastic, and I had to break out the back-up pair. This pair lasted happily until last week, when I stupidly knocked the case with both of the lids screwed off onto the floor, losing one of the contacts forever and putting a nick in the other one. As a replacement for the missing contact, I have been wearing a crappy old Focus contact that I found in the medicine cabinet. As a result, my left eye is bright red and unhappy. Today I get to get new contacts that I have been assured are not only disposable but good. Ciba is apparently only good at working with non-ocular plastics, according to my new optometrist. He likes Johnson & Johnson, which sounds good to me because I don't believe the doctor at WalMart anymore. Ciba is evil.
I swear.
