Today, I was a moron. Chemical burns + Contact lenses= not good.
I've worn contact lenses for 16 years. Without them, I joke that I cannot see. I can, technically, *see* however, I cannot distinguish the big, blurry shapes in front of me very well.
I'm up north, visiting a friend and helping her recover from surgery, and I left briefly today to have brunch with friends of mine. While waiting in front of the diner for our other friend to arrive, my eyes started wigging out. My contact lens was NOT behaving, and I knew that if I didn't get drops in them NOW, I was going to lose my lens. I couldn't remember if I had packed my extra lenses, just in case, and when my eyes started tearing to the point I knew I couldn't wait anymore, I asked my friend to zip over to the Walgreens on the next corner.
I couldn't see much of anything at this point, everything was blurry from my eyes watering non-stop. We went to the back wall, I asked my friend, (who has never worn contacts in her life) to help me find one with a travel case. She grabbed one, and it was by a brand I'd used before, but not in a really long time. It was cheaper than most of the others, so it was even better!
We trek up to the counter, pay for it, I pop my lens out, place it in the vertical case, which I commented was so cool, because I'd never seen one like that before.... and head outside.
My friend and I sit in the car and talk a few minutes while my lens soaks, and then I take it out, rise it off and pop it into my eye.
HOLY MOTHER OF PEARL!!!!!!
I thought I was dying.
Seriously.
It was like pouring boiling hot acid water into my eye, and stabbing it with a flame engulfed dagger, straight from the pits of hell!!!!!
My eyelid clamped shut, tighter than Fort Knox, and I screamed holy hell.
My friends motherly instinct kicked in, and asked what she could do to help, as I pull the lens (finally) back out of my eye, to which I yell at her to run into walgreens and get me SALINE, NOW.
Any brand, she asks.
RENU. Just RENU. Any RENU. RENU the size of my head!! GO!!!
She takes off like a bat out of Haiti, and I writhe in agony. As soon as the stars leave my other eye and I can semi focus, I realize that I now need to go into walgreens and flush my eye ASAP, before I go blind. Because I'm blind enough. I really need to be able to not totally go blind.
I turn off the car, grab the un-holy water that I put in my eye, and go into walgreens as my friend gets up to the register. I pay, and ask the lady where the bathroom is, and bolt there. The other lady unlocks it, I stick my head under the sink and begin to flush it.
Then, after what felt like a minute, and an hour, all at the same time- I feel a little relief. My eyeball stops rolling.. and I look at my reflection. Aside from the fact that my makeup is now gone, my eye looks like a tomato, inside and outside- all around it!! I open the RENU and squeeze the crap out of the bottle, forcing sterile saline into my eyes like a flush station from my old high school chem class. While I'm flushing my eye, I ask my friend to read the bottle of the "un-holy" water.
It's hydrogen-peroxide cleansing solution that is made to be used overnight, at least 6 hours while it neutralizes, before the lenses re-enter your eye. It says on the label not to put it into your eye directly, or not to wear lenses before the solution neutralizes in 6 hours, but who the hell could read that when my eyes were tearing like they were when I first entered walgreens to begin with?! Definitely NOT me!! Holy Moly!!
It was literally right next to the stuff I normally use, and being that it was cheaper one, according to my friend, I just grabbed it and left!!!
Now, this was at about 10am. I went to the diner, my eye tearing, but feeling 150% better... but no where near where it should have been..
I go back to the house I'm staying at, and my eye just doesn't stop tearing. We decide to head to the local walmart, because I know that they took my insurance in Florida, so I'm hoping they do in New York, too.
They don't but whatever, I need to be seen. The eye doc sees me, I explain my stupidity to him, he applauds me for my quick thinking (flushing in the bathroom sink and with the saline) and then tells me he's going to flip my lid and flush me again. Holy crap. The second time was a LOT more painful. He did a full exam told me that I definitely have a chemical burn, but my quick acting made it less than it could have been (WHAT?! It seriously feels like I got prodded with the devil's pointy tail STILL) and offers me some antibiotic drops so I don't get an infection. He puts a numbing drop in it before I leave, and I try to bribe him to let me keep those... because I felt relief almost instantly. While he's amused by me, he doesn't allow me to take the numbing drops.. and I leave with a pout.
I get my rx from the pharmacy, head back to my friends house, and a few hours later, sit here on the couch typing this blog post, with tears streaming down my right eye like Niagra Falls. I had a video chat with the kids, and my daughter told me I looked like popeye.
Right now, I'm over it, and really, truly pretending that my water is wine!!!
I go home in about 12 hours. And I may lock myself in my bubble for quite some time. Especially because there's wine in my chaos at home...
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