contacts!

[foxtongue]

Tried contact lenses for the first time today, and I think I'll like them once I get over the AUGH-AUGH-OMGWTFBBQSAUCE-THERE-IS-SOMETHING-TOUCHING-MY-EYE. They apparently come free with the Image Optometry Eye Exam + Glasses package. Really it's an Eye Exam + Glasses + Contacts Fitting + Contacts package. (All for $90! I should find out if I get future discounts for talking about how awesome they are. Seriously.) I thought I would have issues with them, always having been nervous with the idea, but the fellow at the shop was incredibly reassuring, treating the topic with such aplomb that I felt like a country mouse for doubting at all.

After half an hour of fumbling and learning how to properly poke my eye, (AUGH), I couldn't master how to put them in, so the man at the optometrists put the first one in for me, which was quick, painless, and completely bizarre. It took, like, a millisecond.
Pow
and that was it.
I had a thing on my eye.
I didn't even have time to react.

Wearing only one contact was very strange, as everything was both clear and not clear, and if it weren't for the many, many drug sequences I've seen in movies, it would have played havoc with my sight. As it was, it looked, as far as I can tell, like mescaline, and I was fine. The second one was much easier, as then I could see what I was doing, (AUGH AUGH), a fact that blew my tiny mind a little bit all by itself, given I was still in elementary school the last time I saw myself clearly in a mirror.

Once they were in, I could barely stand, as the sheer amount of detail in the world was overwhelming. I had periphery! The carpet was polka-dot! There were individual raindrops outside! EVERYTHING HAD EDGES, NOT JUST THE MIDDLE OF WHERE I LOOKED. I tried walking around a bit and bumped into almost everything possible, because without the world warping effect of glasses, I wasn't sure how far away anything was. The worst moment, however, was far more personal. Considering my face properly in a mirror for the first time since grade five almost broke my heart. I had hoped, when I was younger, to grow up to look like a far happier person.

Continuing onward, I was then supposed to learn how to take the contacts out. I say supposed to, because I just couldn't figure it out. I was quick to learn how to touch my eyes and how to push the contacts around, (a terrible feeling), but actually lifting them up off the surface was a trick I did not master. Once again, the nice fellow working at the store helped me out, and popped them out for me as easy as blinking, as if I had not just spent fourty minutes struggling like a child with the top of a pickle jar.

The practice ones came home with me, and there they are, sitting accusingly on a shelf in my bedroom, as I muster up the courage to try again. (Probably tomorrow, once my eyes stop feeling bruised from how much I poked them today.) I've decided that I likely shouldn't try to learn them outside of office hours, in case I need to pop out to a glasses store and ask someone behind the counter for help, but I'm pretty sure that once I catch the knack of reliably putting them in and taking them out again, I'll be glad to have a pair. Really, no matter how steep the learning curve, I love the fact that once they are in, I CAN SEE THROUGH TIME.

Comments

[themythicalman.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on your new eyes. I had the same problem when I first tried contact lenses; it took me about two weeks to get used to poking my eyes and popping lenses in/taking them out.

Where was this place? I haven't had glasses/contacts in years and am in serious need of them, and $90 sounds like it would be within my budget (plus my work plan might help pay for them).

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

Broadway and Heather. http://image.ca/

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

I think that once I get used to how the motions feel, in my hands, I mean, the gestures and movements required, I'll be far better at it. As is, I keep trying to see what I'm doing, which is ridiculous when what I'm trying to do is put fingers in my eye.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

wow! are your contacts doing something that no pair of glasses can do?

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

They give me a full range of vision, in all directions. Glasses make little windows in front of your eyes, contacts show you everything. Also, part of the way glasses work is that they shrink things a little, which made distances seem strange once I could see with them off.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

btw, do you wanna hang out this Friday or next week?

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

Sorry I didn't get back to your earlier. This week got a bit out of hand all the sudden. Next week? Friday's I'm usually on a bus to Seattle, but Mon-Thurs are all sorts of open.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Cool. I'm pretty flexible. How about Tue ~8pm, somewhere in East Van?

[blogtodiffer.livejournal.com]

Huzzah for ever-increasing clarity of vision!

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

My eyes are still sore from my sad attempts to learn how to use contacts earlier today, but it was worth it.

[drcuriosity]

The photo reminds me of the Afghan Girl. A different kind of striking, though.

I totally understand the peripheral vision thing. My prescription is +3, +6. Even with the special plastic to make the lenses a lot thinner and all, I just have to get used to having blind spots. I imagine it'd be much worse for the myopic, though.

Sadly my long-sightedness will only get worse with age. Hopefully by the time that becomes a problem, technology will have a solution. Maybe they'll even invent a way to get my binocular vision working. (I totally need cybereyes.)

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

You're the second person to say that, though I had to look it up to remember what it was. Thank you!

I feel your pain. Mine are approximately -6.5 and -6.75. I imagine +6 is just as blind as -6, just in the other direction. My astigmatism is so bad that I live in my glasses. They come off when I sleep, when I shower, and at the swimming pool. That's pretty much it.

[rocket-jockey.livejournal.com]

You are fortunate in that you look great with glasses or without - you obviously know how to pick your frames, and you have really marvelous eyes.

[drcuriosity]

*nod* It's similarly challenging, but things are challenging for different reasons or in different ways.

I can see fine for navigation and such, but the lopsided strength means I have no inherent binocular vision, so I have to rely of size and motion cues to estimate depth. I'll occasionally tilt my head from side to side like a bird when I'm trying to figure out how far away things are. Eye surgery has left me with fewer and unbalanced optic muscles compared to normal people, so I can't track fast-moving objects as easily. I suck at ball sports just as much as a myopic person would, though for different reasons :-)

Naturally, close-in stuff is where it's really tricky. I gave up learning how to sew due to the amount of blood loss it causes. Soldering electrical components is similarly challenging (and occasionally burny). Intimacy is an interesting one: I've had a few lovers who got concerned, for example, when I pulled my face back from them when looking them in the eyes - because that's the only I can actually focus on the eyes I'm looking into. On the other hand, if you can't easily explore someone with your eyes, then I can at least tell myself that it's encouraged me to hone my other senses. I'm likely more tactile than the average man as a result.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

My binocular vision has stabilized a lot in the past few years, but it used to be far less apparent to me how far away anything was, especailly when my glasses prescription grew too old to be more than marginally useful. My friends ganged up and bought me a new pair for my birthday when they noticed just how many tricks I have for touching things to know how far away they were, like trailing my hand along a wall when next to it, and how specifically I would put down cups. I'm with you on the tactile thing, too. The less I can see, the more I like textures and when I'm intimate with someone, certain positions aren't as comfortable, because I can no longer see the person I'm with, which, especially at first, can be incredibly off-putting.

[katkent.livejournal.com]

Boo. You look fantastic in your sadness too.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

It was more the shock of it. Not seeing one's own face properly for over ten years is a bit of a stunner.

Pores. Those were also surprising. I've only ever seen them on other people. :P

Wow.

[kindelingboy.livejournal.com]

You should make a list of things you want to look at.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

People. I want to see you from across a room, and David, and Tony, and Lung, and Nicole, and my Mum, and everyone! All my family. I want to know the subtleties of expression you're capable of, I want to be able to slyly see you from the corner of my eye.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

I spent two hours trying to get the contacts in when I tried them years ago, and I just couldn't do it. Congratulations on being part of the few!

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

I spent an hour and fourty minutes and only got one in, and none out, and my only success felt much like an accident. No congratulations yet, not until I can figure out the method to this madness, at least enough that there's not a chance I'll get stuck with them in!

[rocket-jockey.livejournal.com]

One thing to try - if your eye is dry and your fingers wet, the contact will stick to your finger and not your eye. If I'm having trouble, I sometimes put a drop of my eye rewetting drops into either my eye or into the contact and then put the lens into my eye right away, and that helps.

To get them out, I use a gentle pinching motion across the lens with thumb and forefinger, which folds it upwards in the middle and breaks the seal to the cornea.

[kylecassidy.livejournal.com]

book! book! let's do a photo book!

[rocket-jockey.livejournal.com]

That's almost exactly my reaction when I first put contacts in at the eye clinic - fumbling to get them in, then "crap! something in my eye!" and profuse tearing, and then clear peripheral vision for the first time. I just sat there in the exam chair and marveled at being able to read the clock out of the corner of my eye.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

I didn't get tearing so much as stinging. It was stinging in a very "you've done something idiotic" way until I put eye drops in, and then I was okay. Did you have the freaky world happen when you only had one in?

[rocket-jockey.livejournal.com]

The stinging was terrible the first couple of times, and when I have just one in even now I get a bizarre effect as the eyes try to adjust focus to one another, so things are a bit jerky for a minute in a sort of halo strobe effect. Everything is blurry in one eye, overlaid with sharp from the other, and things look like they're at different distances depending on which eye sees it. It's similar to having one lens pop out of my glasses, but the perspective distortion is more subtle.

When I had the first pair in and I had sharp peripheral vision in, like, ever, the first thing I said was "Good God, I can see *everything*!" The eye doctor started to laugh, and said he'd never heard anyone react like that before. To tell the truth, I was glad that you had the same sort of feeling.

[skonen-blades.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I tried on some novelty contact lenses at an alternative lifestyle fair once and it was really weird. I'd be fine for ten minutes and my brain would go SOMETHING IS IN YOUR EYE for about thirty seconds and then it would calm down again. Very interesting.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I had that and the "WHAT ARE YOU DOING? YOU CAN'T SEE WITHOUT YOUR GLASSES!" and waves of not quite dizzy light headedness.

[rocket-jockey.livejournal.com]

I alternate glasses and contacts, and I sometimes will have a panic moment where I thenk, "I've lost my glasses!" and then realize I can see and have my contacts in.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

I imagine that if I get to the point where contacts are just part of the routine, THAT WILL HAPPEN TO ME ALL THE TIME.

[rocket-jockey.livejournal.com]

I've worn glasses more than thirty years, and contacts for maybe ten, so it's sometimes a little surreal to not have specs on my nose. But oh! how I like having peripheral vision!

I think the worst disorientation is when I change directly from one to the other, because the perspective chages abruptly from the eyeglass distortion. That takes a minute or two where the floor looks farther away than it feels.

[wyldkyss.livejournal.com]

Contacts completely and utterly terrify me.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

Is it the eye touching? Or the horror stories of contacts sliding behind the eye?

[kencf0618.livejournal.com]

I wore hard contacts for a couple of years back in the day —my eyes were relatively insensitive— but eventually switched back to spectacles as they were harder to lose. Dicking around with the sensorium is always an interesting exercise!

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

It's funny how many people I've talked to who wore contacts for awhile, but then "got too lazy".

[bonefinder.livejournal.com]

Congrats!!!!