Contact Removal for Dummies

Well, I have been away for almost a week due to a self-inflicted eye injury. I think that this clinches the soft lens vs. gas permeable internal debate that I have having. Wearing my new soft lenses I removed one from my left eye with apparent abandon and the result was that I damaged my cornea. Now, apparently this is not an uncommon event at the eye clinic but I did impress the optometrist and several students with the level of damage to my eye. She told me as an aside that on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the worst she thought mine was a 9. Makes you proud when you can make the doctor wince.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c7/Schematic_diagram_of_the_human_eye_with_English_annotations.svg/600px-Schematic_diagram_of_the_human_eye_with_English_annotations.svg.png


We have an optometry clinic on campus and as we get a staff discount I had chosen to purchase my new lenses from a very helpful, eager, student. Apparently her training in soft lens removal didn't stick in my head as I tried to remove the lens like it was a gas permeable and not a soft lens. Now I don't have a head for science but listening to the people who surrounded me at various times last week I think that what I did was not only scrape off the epithelial layer but I also got down to the corneal stroma which apparently was what caused the unholy pain part of the equation. I knew that the leftover Vicodin would come in handy some day. I can see fairly well today but the idea of inserting any contact lens into my left eye makes me vaguely nauseous so its my hideous glasses until the I can face the idea again.

Here's for an uneventful week.