I Can See Clearly Now (Sort Of)

Last night I was over at Kristi's house, and one of my contacts was bothering me. I went into the bathroom, took some contact solution off the shelf, and took my contact out. After rinsing it thoroughly, I went to put it back in. As soon as the contact barely touched my eye, I almost had a heart attack. It was burning SOOOO much. Honestly it felt like I had poured rubbing alcohol in my eye. From like, one drop of the liquid. It just kept burning and burning and burning. I cannot put into words how much it hurt. But it hurt...A LOT.

Turns out, that instead of saline solution, I had cleaned my contact off with this:
Looks like contact solution, right? Well…I failed to notice this warning on the side of the bottle:

This solution needs at least six hours to neutralize. Do not rinse lenses with Clear Care® prior to inserting lenses into your eyes. If you want to rinse lenses, use a sterile saline like Softwear® Saline. Do not squirt Clear Care® directly into your eyes.

So…yeah…basically it is solution for overnight cleaning. And I put the unneutralized solution in my eyes. Which makes me think of perm solution. Which, honestly, I think if I’d put perm solution in my eye…it wouldn’t have hurt any more than this did.

So…I rinsed the contact with water, and with regular saline and then put it in my eye. And it STILL felt just as bad. Burn burn burn. You see, because it still hadn’t been six hours. My eye was watering like crazy, and the left side of my face was covered in smeared mascara. I looked like Alice Cooper. I’m so freaking stupid. Finally I just threw the contact out…and got a spare one out of my purse and put it in. And it felt fine...(as fine as it could feel, under the circumstances)…but my eye still hurts. This morning it’s still bright red.

So...as a public service announcement...don't put non-saline solution in your eyes. Now you know. And now I know. And thankfully I got the glam rock makeup off my face. You have to count the little blessings, after all.