My Left Eye

It's 4:23 AM. I've woken up in the middle of the night. An itchy left eye is the culprit and although it feels weird, like I have something foreign floating around in the aqueous humor, a trip to the bathroom mirror reveals that there's nothing visibly wrong with it. So, I make sure one last time that I haven't left my contact in there and when I'm certain that the eye is debris-free, I wash it out with warm water and head back to bed.

Except I can't sleep now. Instead of spending the couple of hours I have before I must wake up and get ready for work in sweet, sweet slumber, I've taken a drowsy plunge into the sleepless world of hypochondria. The eye still feels heavy and irritated and now I swear that I have a newly acquired blind spot. I'm going blind at 28 and I don't want to go blind at 28 or ever. Oh, dear, sweet God, WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS? I happen to like sight very much. It happens to be among my favorite senses.

But what if it isn't simply blindness? What if my eye's infected? How safe are contact lens anyway? And, yes, I admit that sometimes I just throw the lenses in their case, without first rubbing and rinsing them clean. HOWEVER, there was this film student girl in my creative writing class who would remove her contacts from her eyes, pop them in her mouth to wet them, before reinserting them into her eyes. IF ANYONE SHOULD HAVE A PROSTHETIC EYE, IT SHOULD BE TISCH GIRL! How could it possibly be right for someone whose only mistake is not cleaning, rubbing and rinsing every single time she removes her contact lenses to have an eye removed while Tisch girl gets to keep both of hers. And, sweet jeebus, if I thought popping a contact into my eye was an impossible task that first time at Lens Crafters, nearly a decade ago, I can't even begin to imagine what fitting a prosthetic eye into my orbital cavity will be like.

It's 4:39AM and I'm lying in bed, kicking myself for not rubbing and rinsing my contact lenses. So, I pull out my G4 and Google "prosthetic eyes," and find this site of the Prosthetic Eye Institute and, oh my God, this is the absolute last thing I need. Between a bum hip and a prosthetic eye, I'm done. I'M DONE.

Speaking of the hip, it's not feeling so hot at 4:45AM. So, I plug in my electric heating pad and wallow in the realization that I have a bum right hip and a bum left eye. And I still can't sleep, so I continue Googling "prosthetic eyes" and am somewhat relieved to read that ocular science has taken leaps in bounds in the area of prosthetics, that todays prosthetics use porous materials that allow blood vessels to grow right into them. I don't know how that helps but it sure sounds like it does.

I imagine forming a support group for all wearers of prosthetic eyes; we can meet weekly and discuss phantom eye crusts and tears. Oh, the phantom tears! And, to think that, only this morning, I was bemoaning something as simple and repairable as the snugness of my jeans. Silly, silly Sabila. If only you'd rubbed and rinsed those contacts, you wouldn't be awake with an infected eye at 5:15AM.....

...um...actually, the eye doesn't feel half bad anymore...THANK GOD!

Maybe I should try to get some sleep. Goodnight.