My eyes...

Those readers that are squeamish - look away!

I wear contact lenses, which is usually not a problem. Although I hate touching my eyes, over the last year of so I have got acclimatised to poking around in the old eyes to get the contacts out - normally it's a simple in-out manoeuvre.

Not yesterday night.

I had had a brilliant time at my church youth group, and was not expecting a problem, apart from maybe getting to sleep. But no, of course everything had to get complicated. I thought my contact wasn't out, but I couldn't see; I thought it was in the corner of my eye, but I wasn't sure....

cue panic.

I knew it was really bad for your eye to sleep with a contact in, so I rang my friend's mum (who is an optician) and basically cried down the phone to her! Embarrassing looking back, but it was astonishing how I was trying NOT to panic. In the end she told me that as long as it wasn't on the colour (cornea?) of my eye, I could sleep with it in, and it should slip out by morning. Thanks should at this point go to my friend and her mother, who really didn't have to advise me at almost midnight!

By this time it's 12:30, and I'm exhausted. Unfortunately, I'm so terrified that my eyes are going to harden over, that I'm waking up every 90 mins. Disaster.

And so I'm up and about again at about 8 am today, and guess what - I wasn't sure, but I thought my contact was still in...

cue panic.

I told my poor father, who took me into town. We went to the opticians, but the lovely lady on the front desk told us that there weren't actually any qualified opticians in that day. Or tomorrow. Actually, there wouldn't be ANY opticians available until Wednesday.

cue panic.

After we had ran to the next opticians, I realised that as I wasn't registered to that opticians, I would have to register before they would even LOOK at my eye! Talk about bureaucracy! Finally I went in and saw an optician who was really lovely and helpful, calming me down and then looking at me eye.

I must reiterate here and say that I hate people touching my eyes, myself included. After about twenty minutes, dye had been put in my eye, moisturiser (?) had been put in my eye, as had cotton buds, I was starting to completely freak out. The optician couldn't find any evidence of a contact lens, but there was something in my eye.

cue panic.

Eventually, the optician said that she was almost certain that the contact lens wasn't in my eye, but that some hairs from the corner of my eye had been clogging up, and may cause an infection. She couldn't get them out (oh great), and I would have to put drops in my eye every hour until Monday, and then come back in for a check up. If there was no improvement, the hairs would have to be tweezered out.

cue panic.

And that pretty much brings us up to date. I can't wear my contacts now until at least Tuesday, not that I'm heavily inclined to now, but I had really wanted to wear them for the barbecue this evening - the barbecue that may not be happening because of the really heavy rain pouring outside my window right now.

Great. Just great!

On the bright side, this whole fiasco has managed to make me forget for about twelve hours that there is only one week and two days until results day!

Fun fun fun!