Saline Sorrow…the Stingy Kind

Fungal Keratitis – Take a peek at this mess

I had this happen to me more times than I can even remember.  Blasting through soft contact lenses in half the time they’d normally last, while using the enzyme tablets to clean them almost religiously.  In 2002 I was driving to work and the headache I woke up with got more intense every minute of the drive.  Eventually I had to pull over because of the pain.  In my left eye (if I remember correctly, don’t have the medical records handy), there was this dark red dot in the white part to the outside with blood colored tentacles going every which way from it.  Diagnosed as a corneal ulcer, I worked that week with sunglasses on indoors, goop on that eye, and a headache that would only get better when I closed my eyes indoors (if the sun was out, it still kicked my ass whether my eyes were open or closed).

So from that point on, if I could go without contacts for a part of the day, I’d hold off on putting them in.  Everywhere I went, in my pocket was another set in solution.  After having what I had, you don’t ever want to go through it again.  Because until your sight is threatened, a person doesn’t normally ponder life without it all that often.  Kind of like pushing someone’s wheelchair, helping them to do things you usually just take for granted.  A sense of fear mixed with elation, knowing you’re not there yet, but also that the clock could very well be ticking.  So you look extra hard both ways before crossing the street from then on.

The worst stretch came just before we moved to the new house.  Still living in Braintree, about a month or two before the twins are born, for at least 45 days my eyes would look like those pictures in the link above.  Van Helsing can vouch for that.  Again with the headaches, but not as severe this time.  Instead it was an unbearable stinging until I got the contact out, and for a couple days afterwards I’d look like the living dead, people telling me it looked like my eyes were going to fall out or explode at any minute.  A truly wonderful ailment to experience without health insurance, everyone became convinced that it was the actual lenses causing me the problem.  I figured as much and haven’t worn them a single day since my sons were born.  

Now comes a story about people using the saline solution I always did, and widespread breakouts of those insanely gross pictures at the top of this post.  Go figure.  I can finally close the case on that mystery.