My friend has always enjoyed perfect vision. As she beautifully progressed into middle age, she admired all those fancy reading glasses her friends were flaunting in hopes of looking fashionable (instead of old), and bought a pair for herself. Voila! She could view ever so much better her books, her Kindle, her tax returns. Okay, she thought, not so bad. These glasses are super cute. Like when we all wanted to sport those sparkly cat’s eyes glasses in the 50’s and 60’s because, well, they were just peachy keen, right?
Then she began to notice that looking far away was not all that productive either. Relenting, she went to the optometrist. Lo and behold…she needed glasses. Since her vision declined both near and far, she was encouraged to get bifocals.
“But wait!” she said, “what about contact lenses?”
“Well, of course,” said her doctor, “that’s no problem. You have to come in to be fitted.”
When fitting day arrived, my friend was beaming with happiness that modern technology gave her the opportunity to keep those old lady glasses at bay.
“Here we go!” said the perky technician. “Now, open wide, put one contact lens in each eye. We will let you get used to them for a bit, and then practice a couple of times putting them in and taking them out.”
In and out the contacts went. She was impressed that the contacts felt okay in her eyes with no real discomfort.
“Oh, that’s because they are soft lenses, so easy peasy,” the technician told her. “Let’s just do it one more time and then you’re good to go.”
In they go. Out they do not go. She pinched, she pulled, she tugged at imaginary things in her left eye. Nothing happened.
The lens was still in there. It had to be. Her eyes were watering like Niagara Falls. Her fingers were giving her eye a proctology exam. She poked and prodded around desperately seeking a foreign object. Her eye was really hurting now and no lens appeared on her finger.
“Oh my!” said the tech as she leaped out of her chair to get the doctor.
“Well,” the doctor said, “I must say we’ve never had this before.”
He gazed at her eye in the special machine.
“Oh, oh my, oh that can’t be good,” said the doctor.
“What? what?” said my friend, mildly in a panic, okay probably not so mildly.
“Well, it looks like you broke the lens into three pieces in your eye. So we’re going to have to numb your eye and flip your eyelid so we can fish those pieces out of there.”
Yea…………
Her new bifocals are really quite fashion forward.
Perfect vision involves not being able to see Ban Jovi, anywhere, ever!
I will surely pass that on, so that my friend and all others can remove their glasses if need be in a moment’s notice.
Ack! The very thought of having anything stuck on or in my eye that isn’t meant to stay in there permanently (like the lens they install when they remove a cataract) gives me the willies.
I’ve never felt that way, myself…until I heard this story.
That is the exact opposite of easy peasy. I would have passed out so hard in that office, they would still be trying to revive me.
I have been wearing hard contact lenses since I was 13 years old. I always knew hard was better.
Hard is better in more ways than one.
I think we were twin Cathy/Kathys in another life!
Oh ick! Bifocals would be so much easier! Great post!
Thanks, Donna. And you are so right….eventually, bifocals won the day!