Adventures with Contact Lenses

I am quite short-sighted: -8 in one eye and -9 in another. Which if you're in the know, means glasses, even the super-expensive, thin ones, look like coke bottle bottoms. I've been wearing contact lenses since I was 15 and I've had various fun and games with them over the years, mostly titled: Hunt the Contact Lens.

About 4 years ago I changed opticians and I was introduced to the joys of gas permeable lenses that I could sleep in. Basically, it gives me perfect vision for 30 days of the month; I'm supposed to take them out 1 night a month, but I'm a bit haphazard with these things. You have no idea how wonderful it is to be able to wake up in the morning and everything is in focus. To be able to go to bed without having to muck about with fluids, containers and iddy biddy bits of plastic.

Contact lenses are a wonderous thing: as long as they stay put.

They do have a nasty habit of popping out at the most inopportune times. If I've rubbed my eyes, or something has made me blink suddenly, if they're a bit dry: they just leap out and head for the hills. It leaves me only able to see out of one eye while I gingerly pat the floor looking for the escapee. Sometimes a contact lens will decide that it's tired of hanging around my cornea and go for a walk around the white of my eye. That's just painful and it takes a bit of poking about to extract it.

Last night, I wake up at about 3.30am. It's dark, the cat is pinning my legs down in her usual fashion, I'm gratefull she's actually let me have half an inch of bed and a square of duvet. As I consider rolling over and going back to sleep, I realise when I look at the clock, things are a bit more fuzzy than usual. A fuzziness which is resolved as soon as I close one eye.

Shit.

I tentatively extract myself, risky business in itself. The lens could be anywhere: clinging to my pjs, hiding in my hair, lurking in the duvet. I envisage having to wake Boy up to play Hunt the Lens, at which he excels, having a life-time of experience of searching the floor for shiny scales. I think he's going to be such a fabulous boyfriend/husband when the time comes. He knows about answering insecure womens' questions 'of course your bum doesn't look big in that; but I did prefer the other trousers', he knows when to give hugs, chocolate and coffee depending on the mood/time of the month, and he likes hanging out with foul-mouthed women.

I switch the bathroom light on and stand there squinting and swearing until my eyes adjust. I then try and peer into a mirror to see if I can find said lens. This is made more difficult since my eyes are now watering because they really don't want to be open and exposed to so much light at that stupid time of the morning. When I finally spot the lens, trying to disappear round my eyeball, I fish it out. Unfortunately, it takes a running jump. Years of practice has me holding my breath to see if I can hear the damn thing hit the wooden floor. Did I mention the mirror is balance on the top of my toilet cistern and the loo seat is up? Thankfully, I hear it hit the floor and then spend ten minutes patting the floor, muttering under my breath. I did find it eventually. I was so disgusted with it, I took the other one out, cleaned and left them soaking while I went back to bed.

Needless to say I was awake for a good hour after my adventure. At least the clocks went back last night.