First Contact (Lens)
I have horrible eyesight. At a distance of 20 yards, I could only distinguish my father and mother from each other by height. I’ve worn glasses since about the 2nd grade. I’ve always been so squeamish about touching my eyeballs that I’ve never even considered wearing contact lenses.
That all changed yesterday. I realized that the ski resorts here in Park City open this weekend (weather permitting), and I can’t wear my glasses underneath ski goggles. So I took the plunge and went in to get a contact lens exam.
The exam was just like a glasses exam, from my perspective. The lenses, though, are not like glasses. I spent about 20 minutes after the exam sitting in a chair in their office, jabbing my eyes violently attempting to get the lenses in. When I finally succeeded, they told me I had to take them out (for practice). Jabbing my eyes was nothing compared to scraping them in an attempt to remove the lenses.
When I finally left the optometrist’s office, I looked like I was hung over from a gallon of whiskey. But I looked like a hung-over drunk with good vision–I wasn’t wearing glasses! I’d never experienced good eyesight without glasses, and it felt really good. One thing I noticed right away is that everything looks bigger. I’d learned in Physics 123 that glasses for the myopic make the image appear smaller, but it never meant anything to me. Suddenly this 24″ Dell LCD seems enormous 
This morning, I got the time to insert the contacts down to about 15 minutes. Hopefully that time keeps decreasing. I don’t know how much more punishment my eyes can take. I’ve told myself I’ll wear them full-time for at least 2 weeks to give them a fair chance. I have a minor astigmatism in one eye, major enough to correct with glasses but not enough to correct with contact lenses. I can tell that the picture with the lenses is not quite as good as it is with glasses (especially at reading distance, 2-4 feet away), but it’s about evened out by the increase in image size.
December 5th, 2006 at 7:16 pm
lol I remember the one time I let my fingernails grow too long and when I took out my contacts I scraped a streak of eye-jelly off. That hurt a LOT.