Eye Sore

My sister Prinna Gchatted me last week with this helpful reminder: "Don't sleep in your contacts, Pharon. I just got back from the eye doctor and turns out, that's super bad."

Most people probably wouldn't need this reminder. But I spent approx 10 months straight, sleeping in my contacts and having a piece of plastic inadvertently glued to my eyeballs during college because I thought "Hey, college girls have enough trouble navigating their dark apartments at 4 a.m. for a glug of water from the bathroom sink with a bloodstream full of Kamikaze shots. Why add near-sightedness to the equation?"

But I have since stopped doing that and diligently take my plastic miracles out every night. However, I'm not so good with the "then throw the plastic away when they are covered with calcium deposits and your eyes start burning with every blink," part of the contact maintenance plan.

So it was not surprising that my last pair of contacts was littered with calcium deposits. Every blink was equivalent to walking in the summer while wearing a dress and having your inner thighs grab on to each other for dear life. It was unpleasant.

I spent a few weeks wearing my glasses to avoid the painful chore of seeing. It was fine. People thought I was smart. I felt like I could do math. But I was getting blinded by sunlight and hangovers were tough to hide when, instead of my baggy eyes being covered by stunna shades, they were magnified by 4-inch thick lenses.

I knew I had to go to the eye doctor. But I kept putting it off because I didn't know where to go. Geo insisted "Just go to Mayo!" which is where our insurance apparently lives. However, I am boycotting Mayo because...well, just because. So I googled "eyeball fixers" and found a place nearby. I called on Friday, had an appointment on Monday.

I hate eye appointments. I do. They make me feel like the last stop of the Survival of the Fittest test. At my appointment, the lady was all "Okay, take off your glasses. Now look ahead of you and tell me if you can read what's on the screen." I saw some sort of shape with some black spots inside it, which I could only assume were letters." I lied and said "I can almost make out the bottom line" because I didn't want to be excused to the extinction line.

Then she very quietly laughs and says, "Okay, you can put your glasses back on." So I do and I see that the shape in front of me is actually a picture of one giant E. That's it. There are no top lines, bottom lines, or anything even resembling anything besides one stupid letter. I had failed. It's been nice knowing you, evolution.

Whatever...the appointment continues and the results are in: I have terrible eyesight and will forever be a stain on the dreams of a perfect civilization. But to make matters worse, a man then reminds me that, as is the case in every other nightmare eye appointment, I'll have to have my eyes dilated.

For those of you who don't know what that means, it basically means that they drop some horrific drops into my eyes, my mascara smears down my face and suddenly my pupils are the size of Mars. I'm like an anime character. Oh, and with all that light pouring into those engorged pupils, I also can't see anything between my nose and whatever is like 2 feet in front of me. "Will I be okay to drive home?" I ask. The doctor says "Sure. You don't live far, right?" Yeah. Because you only need sight when you are driving across the country.

Anyway, I have myself a brand spankin' new pair of contacts and (literally) a better outlook on everything. And I made myself the same promises I make myself after every eye appointment: I WILL take care of these eyeballs of mine. I WILL avoid the calcium deposit debacle. I WILL look into Lasik.