As I mentioned in this thread, whilst on vacation I ripped out a chunk of my cornea when I dozed off with my contact lenses in, they dried out a bit and stuck to my cornea. Anybody ever see the movie “Trick?” “Do you know what cum in your eye feels like, Gabriel? It BURNS!” Well, so does ripping out a chunk of your cornea. For about three days it felt like there was a hot ember stuck under my eyelid, and I was constantly tearing (and sniffling) and blinking and kvetching. Oy!
So after a trip to the ER and some antibiotic drops, and following the doctor’s advice (“2 drops every four hours to kill the infection until it stops hurting, but the cornea will heal on its own in a few days, so keep it wet and don’t wear your contacts for a week”), five days later there was no pain (I put the drops in for a few extra days anyway), and a week later I started wearing my contacts again without any problems. That was three days ago.
I wake up this morning… and it burns!
No idea what happened - wore my contacts fine for 3 days, now all of a sudden it hurts again. <sigh> So it’s back to my out-of-date eyeglasses and the drops for another, oh, week or so, just to make sure.
Oh, and did I mention? IT BURNS! (I wish* I had something else in my eye, 'cause that at least I could flush out and be done with it!)
As a young and foolish (isn’t that redundant?) lens-wearer, I had numerous eye infections and scratched my cornea a couple of times.
Hurts like hell and it WON’T STOP!
With a recurrence like that, I’d say hie thee to an ophthalmologist pdq. ER docs can be great, but sometimes they can screw up on the oddball specialty stuff.
Esprix, sorry to hear your eye got hurt, even sorrier I had to read about it because now my eyes hurt! Take care of it and I bet you look cute in glasses
“I cried because I had no shoes, then I met a man who had no feet.” or something like that. I’ve got my nice, thick glasses on now, like I do all day, every day, because I’ve tried every contact lens in the world and my eyes have rejected them all. But I still feel sorry that you’re in pain, though. Nobody deserves burning eyeballs. Except maybe Jean Chretien, but that’s neither here nor there.
I would wish a great many things on my enemies but NEVER an ulcerated cornea…
Been there, done that.
In all seriousness, are they softies? I can’t imagine anyone wearing anything else these days. I managed to scratch my eyes with some hard lenses, but that was twenty years ago. I wear AcuVue now and though they are rated for constant wear I take them out every night. Were yours OK for constant use? Not that any of this matters now, but I feel your pain, man.
Actually, I wear the best contacts for your eyes - wear them once, throw them away (used to wear AccuVue Dailies, now wear FocusDailies). They are, of course, not meant to be slept in, but I’ve nodded off before and they’ve never dried like this before. So now I know to re-wet when I wake up before taking them out. <sigh>
Killer was, everything was going just fine… until this morning. Fortunately I have plenty of drops left over, so I’m already feeling better and should be in no pain by the morning. However, I’m going to keep using the drops and wearing my glasses for another week or so, just to be sure.
Sadly, my glasses are way out of date. I need a new pair. But first, I need a real job. <sigh>
My daughter recently suffered a minor eye injury, and one of the things we were told to use to reduce the pain was something called “Lacrilube”, a sort of ‘eye grease’. It lubricates your eye, looks a lot like Neosporin, and cost about $12 for a tiny little tube (a dab will do ya). Ask your opthamologist if that might help.
This is nowhere near as cool as the guy who had his lenses freeze to his eyes and then shatter, but a friend of mine did once manage to give herself a paper cut in her eye. Yikes. Although it hurt like hell, she didn’t realize how much damage she’d done until her daughter pointed out that she could see a flap of cornea moving every time she blinked. I still give her shit about the ol’ paper-cut-in-the-eye incident. Heh… I’m such a rat-bastard.
Good news - seems to be getting better. I went another week with drops and glasses, and even put my contacts in for a job interview, and everything’s fine, no more pain. <fingers crossed>
