Why I Stopped Using Contact Lenses
I was a very religious contact lens user during my first years of college.
I loved how it felt like, how it helped eliminate my giant glasses and let me experience my freedom of days gone by when I didn't have to wear glasses.
I found it convenient and practical in so many ways that I didn't hesitate wearing it for a whole day, because back then I was still joining the college choir which requires you to be present until 9 PM. So I've worn my contacts from home, from about 6 in the morning, and I'll still be wearing it until 10 PM almost every day. In addition, I'll also wear contacts when going out, because I was short of self esteem wearing my giant glasses everywhere. I would also get numerous styes over time, they healed and reappear weeks later because my eyes are too strained to handle constant presence of the lenses, and bacteria flourished inside it. Those weren't a big deal for me because my eye styes healed pretty fast, but they were reoccurring.
It wasn't until one morning I was checking my eyes because I thought I had a speck of feather that had gotten inside. I was pulling my upper left eyelid when I noticed something unusual. There was a flab of flesh inside of it, hanging down my upper eyelid. It was about as big as a grain of corn and was pale pink in color. While it wasn't visible if I didn't pull my eyelid open as it hid inside, it was unnerving for me. I immediately told my mom about it, and there goes my sister eavesdropping, and she said it was probably a Chalazion, a term so new to me that I had to google it. At that moment, it felt like I indeed got myself a Chalazion, I knew without a doubt after searching about what it was online. Then, as if I have gotten no remorse, I continued wearing contact lenses as I would before I got this strange pink flesh inside my left eyelid. Especially at that time, I was planning a Chinese New Year trip to Singapore and I had this obligation to look good for photographs without glasses on.
For three months that followed, I didn't have any complaints regarding my pink flesh, except for the fact that my eyes gets pretty dry and strained every night. I continued getting styes and nasties inside my eyes even though I cleaned my lenses properly and methodically. This time, I've given up wearing lenses too long and reduced my wearing time to half. The eye that got infected with that pink flesh also emitted some nasty pus-like discharge (that literally smelled like pus) throughout the day that I couldn't stand to poke it with my bare fingers. To deal with this, I used eye drops to ease the discharge.
One day I came home from my campus pretty early, I took a catnap but woke up about 6 in the evening. I couldn't sleep thereafter. As I was playing on my phone watching YouTube, I felt a weird discharge on my left eye where the pink flesh is. I thought it was that regular nasty eye discharge that I had for 3 months, so I left the room to grab some tissue. I wiped the discharge with tissues and took a close look at the tissue. It wasn't any discharge, it was BLOOD. I mean, fresh, red blood, not the type of blood-transferred discharge that I thought it would be. I freaked out and upon closer inspection, I found out it was the pink flesh that was bleeding. It was pink before, now it turned black-red. I literally thought I had an eye cancer so I told my mom and she got incredibly concerned as well as I do. So she booked an appointment with the ophthalmologist for me, and while waiting for the day I'd go to the doctor it bled almost every night.
The day came, and to be frank and truthful, I'm scared of going to the docs. There's no explanation as of why. So that day I came early, registered and verified my identity at the eye center, and was told to wait while I was scheduled to go through some tests. They confirmed that my myophia has increased quite tremendously. I froze at my seat as I waited for the nurse to call my name into the doc's office. Fortunately, it wasn't as scary as I thought it'd be. I was diagnosed with Granuloma, and the cause was quite relatable. The flesh grew inside my eyelid after I got one of the styes that I always had during the contact lens-wearing period. The stye popped (like a pimple) but didn't close properly, resulting in bacteria transfer and excessive tissue growth. And because the flesh grew near a blood vessel, it began to bleed.
The ophthalmologist sat me down on her reclining chair, shone a blindingly bright light on my eye and cleaned seemingly my whole eye cavity. She cleaned the residual pus and discharges out of my eyes and said that it was quite severe. She then prescribed medicated eye drops for me as anti-inflammatory and said that it was correctable by surgery, but gave me a few weeks to decide whether I need to or not. In my case, she said, I had little to no possibility for the flesh to detach by itself without surgery due to the degree of severity. So, I waited for 2 weeks to decide.
One dawn, my dad was out of town so I shared a bedroom with my sister and my mom. I recalled sleeping and suddenly jolted up without having any nightmare. I didn't feel any pain, whatsoever. I lifted up my hand and brushed my face with my palm and I felt something wet and squidgy. I took it to a brighter area and saw that it was that flesh now detached. There was a surge of mixed feeling and I summoned my courage to go to the bathroom to check and I noticed on the mirror that the flesh had been detached, miraculously.
The moral of the story I just told you today is that maintaining the cleanliness of your personal belonging is VERY important. Speaking of which, contact lenses are something that normally touch directly with your sensitive eyeball and you shouldn't let any bacteria inside it. Clean your contacts as frequently as possible, if you're planning to wear it for a long time, make sure to bring all the kits with you and clean the contacts every 3-4 hours before reusing it. It's preferred to use a daily-wearing lens instead of the monthly use lenses and when they expire, replace them immediately. I rarely wear contact lenses anymore, just on special occasions and won't wear it for more than 10 hours.
Also, miracle exists as long as you have faith in Him who created you. Illnesses, maladies and storms of life may come but when you're rooted deep in Him you'll never be tossed around.
I loved how it felt like, how it helped eliminate my giant glasses and let me experience my freedom of days gone by when I didn't have to wear glasses.
I found it convenient and practical in so many ways that I didn't hesitate wearing it for a whole day, because back then I was still joining the college choir which requires you to be present until 9 PM. So I've worn my contacts from home, from about 6 in the morning, and I'll still be wearing it until 10 PM almost every day. In addition, I'll also wear contacts when going out, because I was short of self esteem wearing my giant glasses everywhere. I would also get numerous styes over time, they healed and reappear weeks later because my eyes are too strained to handle constant presence of the lenses, and bacteria flourished inside it. Those weren't a big deal for me because my eye styes healed pretty fast, but they were reoccurring.
It wasn't until one morning I was checking my eyes because I thought I had a speck of feather that had gotten inside. I was pulling my upper left eyelid when I noticed something unusual. There was a flab of flesh inside of it, hanging down my upper eyelid. It was about as big as a grain of corn and was pale pink in color. While it wasn't visible if I didn't pull my eyelid open as it hid inside, it was unnerving for me. I immediately told my mom about it, and there goes my sister eavesdropping, and she said it was probably a Chalazion, a term so new to me that I had to google it. At that moment, it felt like I indeed got myself a Chalazion, I knew without a doubt after searching about what it was online. Then, as if I have gotten no remorse, I continued wearing contact lenses as I would before I got this strange pink flesh inside my left eyelid. Especially at that time, I was planning a Chinese New Year trip to Singapore and I had this obligation to look good for photographs without glasses on.
For three months that followed, I didn't have any complaints regarding my pink flesh, except for the fact that my eyes gets pretty dry and strained every night. I continued getting styes and nasties inside my eyes even though I cleaned my lenses properly and methodically. This time, I've given up wearing lenses too long and reduced my wearing time to half. The eye that got infected with that pink flesh also emitted some nasty pus-like discharge (that literally smelled like pus) throughout the day that I couldn't stand to poke it with my bare fingers. To deal with this, I used eye drops to ease the discharge.
One day I came home from my campus pretty early, I took a catnap but woke up about 6 in the evening. I couldn't sleep thereafter. As I was playing on my phone watching YouTube, I felt a weird discharge on my left eye where the pink flesh is. I thought it was that regular nasty eye discharge that I had for 3 months, so I left the room to grab some tissue. I wiped the discharge with tissues and took a close look at the tissue. It wasn't any discharge, it was BLOOD. I mean, fresh, red blood, not the type of blood-transferred discharge that I thought it would be. I freaked out and upon closer inspection, I found out it was the pink flesh that was bleeding. It was pink before, now it turned black-red. I literally thought I had an eye cancer so I told my mom and she got incredibly concerned as well as I do. So she booked an appointment with the ophthalmologist for me, and while waiting for the day I'd go to the doctor it bled almost every night.
The day came, and to be frank and truthful, I'm scared of going to the docs. There's no explanation as of why. So that day I came early, registered and verified my identity at the eye center, and was told to wait while I was scheduled to go through some tests. They confirmed that my myophia has increased quite tremendously. I froze at my seat as I waited for the nurse to call my name into the doc's office. Fortunately, it wasn't as scary as I thought it'd be. I was diagnosed with Granuloma, and the cause was quite relatable. The flesh grew inside my eyelid after I got one of the styes that I always had during the contact lens-wearing period. The stye popped (like a pimple) but didn't close properly, resulting in bacteria transfer and excessive tissue growth. And because the flesh grew near a blood vessel, it began to bleed.
The ophthalmologist sat me down on her reclining chair, shone a blindingly bright light on my eye and cleaned seemingly my whole eye cavity. She cleaned the residual pus and discharges out of my eyes and said that it was quite severe. She then prescribed medicated eye drops for me as anti-inflammatory and said that it was correctable by surgery, but gave me a few weeks to decide whether I need to or not. In my case, she said, I had little to no possibility for the flesh to detach by itself without surgery due to the degree of severity. So, I waited for 2 weeks to decide.
One dawn, my dad was out of town so I shared a bedroom with my sister and my mom. I recalled sleeping and suddenly jolted up without having any nightmare. I didn't feel any pain, whatsoever. I lifted up my hand and brushed my face with my palm and I felt something wet and squidgy. I took it to a brighter area and saw that it was that flesh now detached. There was a surge of mixed feeling and I summoned my courage to go to the bathroom to check and I noticed on the mirror that the flesh had been detached, miraculously.
The moral of the story I just told you today is that maintaining the cleanliness of your personal belonging is VERY important. Speaking of which, contact lenses are something that normally touch directly with your sensitive eyeball and you shouldn't let any bacteria inside it. Clean your contacts as frequently as possible, if you're planning to wear it for a long time, make sure to bring all the kits with you and clean the contacts every 3-4 hours before reusing it. It's preferred to use a daily-wearing lens instead of the monthly use lenses and when they expire, replace them immediately. I rarely wear contact lenses anymore, just on special occasions and won't wear it for more than 10 hours.
Also, miracle exists as long as you have faith in Him who created you. Illnesses, maladies and storms of life may come but when you're rooted deep in Him you'll never be tossed around.
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