Self-Aggrandizement: eyeballing

eyeballing
Filed Friday, November 5 2004.

Having spent much of my life in photography (and now, in film), I'm anal about seeing with clarity and vision. Which is why, despite my prescription being repeatedly described as 'totally pansy' by those who really need their glasses, I wear mine all the time. I have since getting my first pair, in eleventh grade (bought, initially, to help me read the board from my customary back row seat, rather than force a move to the front).

To be accurate, throughout most of college, I actually rotated contacts in about half the time. But, since moving to New York some three and a half years back, I slowly drifted away from rotating. Perhaps it was my hectic bags-below-the-eyes-inducing schedule, the irritating grit of city air, or a desire for the faux-intellectual look a good pair of spectacles provides. Whatever the reason, contacts fell by the wayside.

I realized as much earlier this week, and have since been trying to work them back into use. And, by and large, it's been an excellent change. The only downside: I awake constantly throughout the night, suddenly convinced I forgot to remove the contacts before going to sleep, which might leave me hours deep in irreparable corneal damage.

I should, at this point, admit that I'm a complete and total hypochondriac. The combination of medical knowledge, vivid imagination, and general neurosis conspire to convince me - often aided by Google symptom-searching ("headache and slight fever? I knew it! Malaria!!!") - that my world is coming to a slow and painful end.

This is particularly true with contacts, due to a booklet I once read at the optometrist's on the potential dangers of sleeping in contacts not approved for 'continuous use'. In pictures and gory written detail, the booklet laid out the risks of 'serious eye infection' and 'abnormal corneal blood vessel growth'. It is the second that most plagues my imagination, as the line between vodka-induced harmlessly bloodshot and slept-in-contacts-induced abnormal blood vessel growth is a distinction admittedly beyond my abilities of accurate self-diagnosis.

Fortunately, unlike in the case of goiter, femoral hernia, or any of the other afflictions I might woefully cast upon myself, shaking slept-in-contacts fears should be rather easy - if I'm not actually wearing the contacts as I sleep, I'm fine. Less fortunately, my contacts-less vision is good enough that, in a darkened room without any distant objects to stare at, I'm often unable to decide whether I am, in fact, wearing them or not, at least without repeatedly poking myself in the eyeball.

Because my contacts are one day disposables, I've now stumbled upon a workable solution: after removing them, I leave them on my night-stand. Waking up at three in the morning, then, I'm able to simply look over at them, slowly drying out, to relieve my worries and put myself back to sleep. Gross perhaps, but certainly better than abnormal corneal blood vessel growth. Or, at least, better than fears of it. As is the case with most of my hypochondriacal self-diagnoses, I happily doubt I'll ever have the chance to experience the real thing.

eyeballing Filed Friday, November 5 2004.

eyeballing
Filed Friday, November 5 2004.