No 45: 3-2-1 Contact
I got my first pair of glasses when I was eleven years old. Since then, it’s taken me a very long time to get around to wearing contact lenses. I waited until contact lens care became simple and streamlined before I took the plunge: Multipurpose all-in-one cleaning solutions, disposable lenses, toric correction for my astigmatism, and extended wear properties that allow me to carry on for days at a time with my lenses continuously in place.
Even so, adjusting to contact lenses was a challenge. When you’ve spent the vast majority of your life with a physical barrier between your eyes and the rest of the world, trying to finger your own eyeball feels acutely unnatural. The first time I requested a contact lens prescription, I was so squeamish about anything getting near my eyes that the ophthalmologist’s assistant was having difficulty administering eyedrops. “Perhaps,” the eye doc gently noted as I squirmed and flinched in the examination chair, “you’re not an ideal candidate for contact lens wear.”
A couple of years ago, I decided to give it another try. The exquisite corps at Modern Eye, a local eyewear store with a Dada theme and superlative customer care, held my hand each step of the way. Every comically drawn-out step, from the hour-plus it took me to insert my first single contact lens, through a few lens-cleaning solution allergies, to my strange aptitude for repeatedly donning the lenses inside-out.
After all that effort, we finally found what works for me: Bausch & Lomb PureVision Torics, a relatively large, yet highly breathable lens. Their thickness makes them difficult to invert, and therefore easy to apply. I can go for months without wearing contact lenses and still pop these in on the first attempt. In stark contrast with my many friends who keep piping the sad refrain, “I have to take out my contacts, my eyes are killing me,” I’ve repeatedly fallen asleep in these lenses at the end of overlong days, and awaked bright-eyed the next morning.
As I tried to remove my contacts earlier today, I started having difficulty lifting out the left lens. My left eye felt a bit itchy, but there was no sign of the lens — when I peered out of that eye, all I saw was a myopic, astigmatic blur. So where did the lens go? Had I dropped it in the sink? Did I accidentally rub it out just moments before? There was no sign of it anywhere. I stared, wall-eyed, into the mirror, but couldn’t detect anything resting on my eye. Eventually, I removed the other lens from my right eye and simply gave up.
A few minutes later, as I continued to fiddle with my itchy left eye, I felt something odd lingering around its outside corner. Voilà, there was the missing lens, scrunched up on itself from all my aimless prodding. Clearly, I should return to leaving them in whenever I’m really tired.
That, and quit poking my eye like I’m one of the Three Stooges.
I am hopeless in the vision department and gave up on contacts years ago. After switching to “gas-perm” lenses, I managed to bite through several of them after having catastrophic contact problems in public. I, ill prepared with no girly purse full of saline and contact lens cases, emulated my father by taking the lens out and sucking on it only to forget that I was chewing gum at the time. After the second time this happened, at a cost of hundreds of hard-earned teenage dollars per hopelessly crushed lens, I decided wearing glasses was not so bad.
One of my greatest fears before starting to wear contacts was from the dreaded lose-the-contact-around-the-back-of-the-eye thingy. Ugh. You story reminds me of my fears!
Like many people I do wear contacts occasionally, but I continue, to this day, to be a little queasy about poking around in my eye. I’ve got two, I know, and technically I can afford to lose one. But still: uggh!
Good look wearing them, and I hope it works out for you.
I just like the fact the you cleverly entitled this post using a nostaglic PBS series.