Temporarily blind

Today was the worst day. I was brutally reminded and subsequently thankful for the gift of sight. Sometime around 11 am my left eye starting bugging me to the point that I took out my contact to see if there was something in it, only to learn there was a hole right in the center. I tried putting it back in, but it hurt too much, so I was forced to throw it in the trash.

This is when I found myself in trouble. See, I don’t bring my glasses with me to work, nor do I keep a spare pair of contacts in my desk (although after this incident, I sure as hell will). I was sitting there with super blind vision in my left eye and crystal clear vision in my right. If you aren’t blind like me, you cannot fully appreciate how horrible this is and how badly it messes with your vision. In fact, I could not see properly without either keeping my left eye shut or covering it with my hand. It still hurts, several hours later, from all the stress. But I digress.

Since my vision was screwed, there was no way I could drive home to get another pair of lenses. If I took out my right lens, I’d be truly blind, so that wasn’t an option either. Joe was my only hope, but he was stuck at home waiting for our dining room table to be delivered. The four hour window was 11:30 am – 3:30 pm. He tried calling them to get a better idea of when they planned on stopping by, but customer service was extremely rude toward him and said they had no idea. I’m fairly certain they were lying. I worked for the cable company for a few years and while we may have given people the impression we couldn’t contact our installers in the field, we could. I bet it’s the same for any company that handles deliveries. But whatever. He couldn’t chance leaving since he’d be gone close to an hour and have to take another day off for the delivery. Plus we wanted our table.

So I suffered a few hours more until quitting time which is when Joe finally made it to my office with a fresh pair of contacts. I was never so happy to see clearly in all my life!

I think all the dry air in the office took its toll on my lenses. They’ve been bothering me lately, but I was putting off changing them (they are monthly disposables). Two hours after the left lens went in the trash, I blinked too hard and suddenly I couldn’t see out my right eye anymore. At first I thought the contact had fallen on the floor or something, and I started freaking out because now I really couldn’t see! I soon realized it was stuck under my eyelid. What a crazy day. I did make my coworkers laugh with the tale of my bad contacts, though.

And I can see again… hallelujah!