How Ø to Remove a Broken Contact Lens

Why is it that we find it so hard to resist picking at a healing wound, poking our tongue at a sore on our gums, popping a zit on the side of our nose, or running with scissors into an over chlorinated pool less than 20 minutes after eating under cooked eggs? What happens to that logic circuit in our brain that tells us STOP while our nimble fingers continue to poke and prod and otherwise make matters worse until we eventually give up a defeated mass of firing nerve endings?

I’ve been a concact lense wearer since the 1970’s, when contact lenses were made out of little bits of glass and if you even looked sideways at something they popped out of your eye. Which back then meant we would swish it around in our mouth for a minute and pop it back in. Small wonder I wear disposable daily wear contact lenses today, eh? And for the most part I never have any trouble with my seeing eyes. But every now and then … for reasons still a mystery to me … one of my lenses will crack and I am left with sharp shards of some space age polymer-plastic material floating around in my eye.

Last night was one of those rare occasions for the contact lens ballroom blitz. The larger piece was easy to locate and carefully pull out of my eye, but the other fragment was out of sight — only small pun intended — though apparently directly on top of the largest PAIN NERVE located in the human body. I know from past experience that when you have one of these hidden floaters in your eye the best thing to do is to allow your body to gently work its way out in its own time. But when you are in pain you don’t want to wait and allow time to pass. So I did every counter intuitive and non-productive thing my pain-filled-brain could come up with.

After several minutes (which felt like hours), I asked my husband to come upstairs with his numismatist loop and flashlight. But while he can spot a double mint mark on the underside of a buffalo’s tail he couldn’t see the rogue contact fragment. I tried every position I could distort my body into — and with hypermobility syndrome that’s a lot of freaky poses — sideways, upside down, cockeyed and supine. The plastic-bit wouldn’t budge.

I tried gently spraying the eye with filtered water. Richard tried pouring water into the eye. Eventually we Googled what other people do — and the vast majority said LEAVE IT ALONE it will work its way out — but I insisted on trying what the other 10% of the internet idiots did. So we filled a large salad bowl with slightly salted water and I put my head in it. Sorry to all of my future dinner guests who will be questioning what I have used the tableware for before it reached my dining room table.

I held my eye open in the shower and let water run over my naked sclera — I am sorry was that a bit too graphic? But nothing I could do would locate the missing lens. Eventually some two plus hours later (which felt like DAYS) I gave up and sat myself up in bed with my laptop computer and some light Facebook reading, my favorite night time soap opera.

Then just as Richard was coming upstairs to say goodnight and grab his towel for a shower, I happened to rub my hand to the left side of my brow and I could feel something dislodge at the far corner of my eye. I grabbed a little mirror from my purse and cocked my head up to the ceiling fan light and there was the most beautiful soft tinted shattered slice of space age polymer-plastic material that I had ever seen. Once visible … it was easy to pull it gently from my now swollen, blood shot sorry eye.

I’d like to say that I’ve learned my lesson and the next time this happens I am certain I will be committed to letting nature take its course. But I have a sense that the mystery hole that attracts these plastic bits and holds them like a magnet until it is ready to let them go is also connected to a brain circuit that makes you forget every logical, reasonable and useful thing you have ever learned. So it is what it is and sometimes it is not even that — best I can hope for is the humor to see its all one big cosmic sitcom and if not in the moment then after the fact. 😉