Hey John,
We’ve met in person a few times in Vegas (I lent you a portable charger once) and at Mania’s and I’ve been a patron for a few months now. I’m catching up on Rewind a Raw/SD shows and I just heard your contact lens story so I wanted to tell you what happened to me since there are some similarities. I apologize for the length in advance.
In the summer of 1998, I was graduating high school and going off to college. I had worn eyeglasses since my sophomore year and I wanted a new look so I got fitted for contact lenses for the first time the day before my big move a few hours away to school. My mom and I had last minute errands to run so we ran late to pick up the lenses. The place was closing within a few minutes so they gave me an extremely fast demonstration on how to remove them and told me to wear them for a few hours. That night, I had a lot of difficulty removing them so I had to enlist the help of my best friend who was also going to be my college roommate (and had already worn contacts for years) to pretty much poke me in the eye and remove them.
Now in college, I was going through my daily routine of putting the contacts in and taking them out, but it was never as easy as everyone made it out to be. Since I had what were called “extended wear”, it was claimed I could wear them for up to 3 days straight at a time. So one night, I went to bed with the contacts in and when I woke up, they were gone. I searched everywhere for them, checked my bed covers, pillows, etc. It wasn’t until later on that night while watching Raw with some friends that I got a pain in one my eyes and I was able to pull one of them out. It looks like it had gone into the back of my head at some point! To make it worse, the 2nd one NEVER CAME OUT. I freaked out and went to the ER and they told me that if that was the case, it would end up disintegrating eventually and not to worry about it. How am I not to worry that it wouldn’t cause brain damage for something??? So at this point, I pretty much gave up on wearing contacts.
Fast forwards to 3 years later, I was going on a date with my girlfriend (now my wife) later on that night and I had woken up to find that my dog at the time had chewed up my eyeglass lenses! So I decided to break out the emergency pair of contacts I had, put them in and went out on my date. We were having such a great time we ended up spending the entire day together and saw a movie. After the movie, I got home in the wee hours of the night and I went to take out the lenses. I was able to take out one of them with no issue. I went out to take the 2nd one, couldn’t do it. I tried again, no dice. I kept trying and with each attempt, the pain was getting more and more intense as I’m touching my eyeball. I tried flushing it out with the contact solution, still no results. Its getting more and more painful and its BURNING. At this point, I’m giving my eye 5-10 mins per attempt before trying again. Still can’t seem to get anywhere with it so I figured if I could lubricate it with tears, it would make it easier to remove. So I started trying to make myself purposely tear up so I just started thinking of some sad shit. My mother finally wakes up, its the break of dawn and she finds me in tears in agony telling her that I can’t get the contact out. So I went to the ER again.
I’m finally seen by a doctor who pours these green eye drops in my affected eye and he tells me that the contact was so old and dry that it had broken apart in my eye. So every attempt I had made to remove it was just causing me to scratch my cornea! They had to remove it, piece by piece with tweezers and I was finally released. AND I’VE NEVER WORN CONTACTS AGAIN.
Can you blame me?