Monday, October 26, 2009

In the blink of an EYE

This is a true story. It's also a stupid story, but one I'm compelled to tell (not really). It's about my eyes. Well, more specifically, it's about the contacts that go IN my eyes. It's a saga that frustrated me at the time but I knew I'd be laughing about soon enough! Well, that time has come...
So, last night I get to work and realize my contacts are cloudy and dryish. Backing up, I had accidentally slept in my contacts the night before, and wondered why the cloudy/blurry vision when I woke up. I thought it was because of my humidifier, which emits a vapor-like smog throughout my room (I swear, I could write a whole blog about how much I'm loving that humidifier!) But the vapor never makes my eyes crusty and swollen, so I revisited the possibility of sleeping in the contacts...and I realize that I can indeed SEE far away, so I MUST have slept in them! Hateful. Further inspection in the mirror revealed great amounts of redness so I removed the offending contacts and threw some others in.
Blah blah blah, head to work and notice the cloudy/dryishness of both eyes. I realized 12 hours is way too long to be in such discomfort, so I plan on driving home between feeding my babies to grab a new pair. Remember that I live in Saratoga Springs and am currently in American Fork, which means I'm at least a day's travel from home, because, well, SS is basically a day's travel from ANYWHERE (except the Walmart and Smiths, which keeps me sane). Then genius strikes: I have an amazingly kind roommate who is NOT working! She takes pity on me and meets me at Target, contacts in hand. Too bad I couldn't go shopping--after all, I WAS in Target's parking lot....still technically at work....bummer!
I can hardly make the drive back to work before I'm ripping out the offensive eye covers...except I realize, shortly after I took the first one out and chucked it in the garbage, that I can't really see without them. Hmmmm. So I close the naked eye and make my way to the parking lot and safely in a stall before I pull out the other one. As I'm about to toss it, the little kid comes out of me and I decide to leave it on my dash so I can see how crispy it has become by morning! (Don't you just love when contacts do that??? I found it out the hard way one night years ago at Steve and Amber's when I stayed overnight and just put my contacts in a lid with NS--apparently, they dry up if not in an enclosed case. It was a terrible lesson then, but one I have fun with now, apparently!)
I run back into the hospital and straight to the bathroom to plug the new guys in. Lefty goes in without a hitch, but Righty needs some coaxing in the form of a squirt of saline. A piece of the universe is in there, under the lens, which is probably the tiniest of dust mites, but for anyone who's had the experience, it feels like a whole beach-ful of sand has taken up residence on your eyeball! I think the saline is helping and head back to the nursery, hoping to be done with the eye issues for the night. Wrong. The situation becomes a debacle when the tiny beach becomes every piece of sand on the northern hemisphere! It's at that point that I can't even open my eye due to the immense discomfort, so I go running back to the bathroom where I pour more NS in there, hoping to flush it out....now I've just created an ocean of sand and water, all mixed in my freaking eye. What now? I remove the affecting lens and find out he's completely ripped! My brand new contact is totally shredded! No wonder.
Now I'm down to one good contact....out of the 4 I've had with me in the past 2 hours. Nice. I can't possibly finish my shift (10+ hours left of it, at this point) with one decent eye....major headache if I even try. So what do I do? Yep, run like the wind down to my car to retrieve the dash decoration, and immediately put it in my mouth to keep it hydrated until I can get to an NS syringe! Yes I did. Spent the rest of my night with one new contact and one totally crappy one. Lived tho. And saw everything I needed to see.....I hope :)
Fast forward to today, when my right eye is still super red and raw from all that scratching. Almost called in sick to work (no I didn't) but got put on call for the whole shift (love it).
Moral of the story? I don't know if there is one, except maybe in addition to all the receipts, gum, camera, ibuprofen, excedrin, phone, headphones, ipod, keys, wallet, antibiotics and cash I have floating around in my Mary Poppins purse, I should maybe keep a spare pair of contacts in there for such a night as this!
As possibly crazy as this might sound, I actually have a picture to accompany this post--not during the actual events, but of the eye in question--although definitely on a better day...

2 comments:

  1. Mel- you are funny! Reading your post makes me SO glad that I don't have contacts and only have to wear glasses occasionally! You make me laugh!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mel,
    I love reading your blog. I just went private and wanted to invite you but you didn't leave me your email address. email me and I will invite you tawnaf@hotmail.com

    ReplyDelete

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I am daughter, sister, friend, counselor, coworker, niece, caretaker, and world-famous aunt (well, maybe not yet, but someday I will be!) And in September I added wife and stepmother to my titles....I'm loving these new ones! In October 2011 I became a mom to an angel baby, Mercy Faith, whose wings took her straight back to heaven. November 2012 we had the unparalleled joy of becoming the parents to our sweet baby girl, Journey Rose, who has added love, joy and amazement to our lives! I try every day to be kinder, stand higher, love deeper, laugh harder and dream bigger than the day before. One of my favorite sayings is "Women who behave rarely make history". So with that in mind, I do my best to BE, STAND, LOVE, LAUGH and DREAM with a mischievious smile on my face and a wink in my eye! I love my life...in short, it's everything I never knew I always wanted...

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