Spectacles are the new contacts

Spent a wonderful evening out last night.

Sonia was coming over, so I decided to put in my contacts in order to look nice for her, as you do. Anyway, within seconds of putting my right one in, it started stinging intensely. I had a quick go at getting it out again as I thought it might be in the wrong way round, but I couldn't shift it. Nevermind, I thought, I can still see and besides it'll come out later once my eye gets wet. I then set off shopping and picked up Sonia (all in the car).

As the pain had been getting worse, I had another go once I got back, but failed even using the aid of eye drops, so I started cooking as time was getting on. Most of the cooking was done just using the one eye, which is generally not a good sign. Just before the meal was cooked, I had another go, but by this time even touching the eye was becoming difficult.

We then sat and ate a nice meal, with myself now hardly able to open either eye. On finishing I had one final push, but just the one attempt left me sat on the edge of the bath, completely unable to open either eye for a good few minutes. It was then that the steady background thought of A&E shifted into the foreground.

The kind Sonia, preparing for an interview the next day, grabbed her notes and drove me to the hospital. I immediately got seen by the admissions nurse and taken into a room within A&E where I sat alone and mostly unable to open either eye for an hour before someone came round. I didn't mind the principle of waiting, but couldn't I have sat with Sonia in the main waiting room, where I could have had my music on, or just chatted? I did take a book along, but obviously that wasn't going to work. Anyway, gripe over. Nurse/Doctor-dude Graham came in and gave me a couple of drops of anaesthetic and asked me to have another go. I could barely touch it again, which he seemed impressed with, and promptly maxed up the anaesthetic. The pain was still quite something however, and I couldn't manage it. He then had a go with a cotton-ended stick as I held my eye open, and got it moving slightly, but that took quite a lot of teeth-gripping. With both eyes tightly clenched shut at this stage and the occasional expletive, he left me for a resting period coming back with a new idea; to use sterile paper as a lever between my eye and the lens and then to sucker it off. To spare you the details, this worked on the third attempt, after the advice of, 'You can scream, shout, swear, call me anything, but you have to keep this eye open', nice.

The upshot was that the lens had probably floated in the solution overnight, and so the eye-side had completely dried out. This meant that when I put it on, it was just like a suction pump to my eye. When it finally came off it took part of my cornea with it; I left the hospital with a classy eye bandage, I can't wear contacts for a week (like I ever want to again), I have to put in antibiotics four times a day for five days, and it feels like a cat with rabies has scratched its scraggy claws across my eyeball.

Still, at least my with my bloodshot, yellowed, antibiotic-oozing eye I looked good for Sonia.