2:09 p.m. - 2005-08-15
From Here You Can See Forever .... NOT!
Before I move on to the rest of our summer rendezvous there is one little story to share. No � it�s not �another� washroom bit.
As many of you know I�m a beginner contact lens wearer (sorry � I can�t find the old entry), and one of the things a relative new wearer needs to learn is to take a second set with you when you travel. (I never travel without my glasses though) I have now learned my lesson.
One evening while at Creation Fest, I was �taking my eye�s out� for the day, I notice that one lens seemed to have a crack through the center. I asked T to come take a look (his expert, experienced wearer look) to see if he could see what I could see. Sure enough he saw the same thing, but it didn�t seem to be a complete tear through to contact. He said to put them in the cleaning solution and we�d take another look in the morning.
Morning came, and the crack was still there. T persuaded me to try it anyway, and pop it into my eye I did (hindsight / foresight � don�t go there!). It felt � all right � I was so aware of the condition of the contact that I wasn�t sure what I was really feeling and what was imagined feeling.
None-the-less undaunted we trekked off to the river for a swim. Increasingly during the swim the eye was getting scratchier. At one point after a �re-surfacing� I inadvertently gave my eye an additional hard rub, and continued said swim. Shortly after this I was standing on shore and noticed that my vision in the one eye was not quite what it should be. In fact, it looked a lot like my vision without any assistance at all. I must have looked a little strange pushing my semi-closed eyelid to and fro, madly searching for any remnant of contact I could find. Once in a while I could see a partial glimmer of quasi optics, leading me to understand that my contact had split and was now playing peek-a-boo around my wee peeper. It seemed to be anywhere except where grasping fingers lurked.
Finally � I managed to take hold of a corner and remove it. To my dismay, dangling from my fingers was only 2/3rds of the original contact. Had the other third washed out during the swim? Was it still swimming around in my head? Oh My!!! My gut instinct told me that it had washed out, and was forever lost in the Columbia River, and I continued our afternoon with proper vision in only one eye.
Thankfully I am near sighted, which bodes well for casual summertime reading on the beach, but proved to be a little disconcerting when I looked up to see something in the distance.
Did you know that your perspective is skewed when only viewing the world with one eye?
Which leads to me to what I think is the funnier part of my story � when travelling on the bike it is very awkward to wear my regular glasses. They are simply not designed to fit comfortably under a motorcycle helmet. So in an endeavour to NOT have to wear my glasses once we got back on to the road I decided to wear only the one contact lens, leaving the other eye to fend for itself. At first it was kinda � sorta �. not really � alright � I made a habit to only look at the scenery from a vantage point of over my T�s right shoulder. Because of the close proximity of my husband�s head/helmet to me while on the bike I am never able to fully see my surroundings with both eyes anyway. However, constantly looking only to the right caused my neck muscles to spasm, and the need to look to the left a �partially blind� necessity.
Needless to say � this experiment lasted all of one day. I put my remaining contact away in its keeper, pulled out my glasses and wore them for the remainder of our time away.
If I recall my entries correctly � I warned you that I considered the wearing of contacts a vane objective. This wearing of only one contact was once again tangible proof. I sit before you - a vane, but humbled woman.
Blessings - LJ
Post script: much later on the day that my contact broke, T and I had gone into a nearby town for a quick bite to eat. Something was just not feeling correct in my eye. After some very graphic searching (too graphic to describe), T peering deeply into a now increasingly bloodshot eye, I located the remaining portion of contact. The missing third had finally surfaced and was not so easily, but safely excavated. Phewww �..
So much for �gut� instinct.
