Week Four: Chemical Burns & Exiting Unemployment

As I'm sure you've noticed, this blog is late. Not insanely late by any means but later than I'd like because keeping on track is integral to my overall success. But it's important to note that there's a very good explanation for that: chemical burn to my eye.

Now, I know what you're thinking: OMG WHAT EVEN HAPPENED? HOW? WHY? HOW?

All of those are very, very good questions, my friends! And I'm here to tell you the story. 

Let me set the scene for you...

It is early afternoon this past Saturday and I am getting ready to leave the house. My sister’s twins’ birthday is today and we (being myself, Mom, sister, and the kiddos) are taking them to the “Bounce House”—colloquially but appropriately named (e.g. not the businesses' actual name). It is a place of torture and hell where tiny humans run around causing chaos and the only saving grace for adults is beer, wine, and over priced carb ridden food. Though in sticking to my keto diet, I did not partake in any of said saving graces. 

I'm going through the usual routine of dry shampooing my hair because showering seems like a waste of time when I’m going to be spending the next several hours with sticky toddlers and finally putting in my contacts. Children don't particularly care if I look or possibly smell like garbage. Now here, my friends, is where I monumentally fucked up.
A few days prior to this, my aunt had brought home some contact solution for me from the facility where she works. It's worth mentioning that this is a brand I’d never seen before. The timing, however, couldn’t have been better because I had just run out of my usual solution. The box also came with some fancy AF contact case the likes of which I’d also never seen before. Totally fine. The box said the barrel contact case (ah hah! New information!) was safe for soft contacts. Take note here that I never even looked at the solution itself. Groovy.

It’s also important to note that I’ve been wearing contacts since I was twelve so the notion of not knowing how to use any particular solution never even crossed my mind. I'll also point out here that I had decided the previous evening that the aforementioned fancy AF contact case was in fact too fancy and I went back to using my old side-by-side case with the new solution. Fuck up number one—or possibly two if you consider not reading the bottle a misstep.

So, in going back to our scene, I’d just put some dry shampoo in my hair and went to put my contacts in. That is when the fire of a thousand burning fucking suns hits my eye. 

It felt a lot like this. 

It is painful. Like jalapeños in the eye painful because you’re a dumbass and didn’t wash your hands. As quickly as humanly fucking possible, I ripped the damned contact out of my eye with the speed that possibly rivaled Speedy Gonzalez, the fastest mouse in all the west. 

After regaining my composure,  my very first thought, again not even considering that the solution is the problem, is that I had residual dry shampoo on my hands. And that would have made sense! It's a chemical and I didn't bother washing my hands before putting in my contacts because that's amateur hour. Besides, that’s something I can fix. Easy peasy. After vigorously scrubbing my hands of any demon dry shampoo contaminant, I pulled out the same contact and rinse it with this new solution. Problem should be fixed by now, right? Clean hands, clean contact. I should be golden. 

And yet there’s more burning. My eye now looks like a goddamn tomato, bloodshot and furious at my oversight. What could possibly be wrong? I checked everything! That’s when I finally picked up the solution bottle.

Hydrogen Peroxide 3% Contact Solution. Not safe for direct eye contact.

By this point, tears are running down my cheek as I’m flushing my eye out with water from the tap, praying the cool water will quench the absolute firestorm happening on my cornea. 

Eventually, the immediate pain subsided and I got a decent look at myself. My eye was red AF but I could still see so I considered that to be a good sign and pressed on with the day. After all, I wasn’t going to miss the twins’ third birthday (despite the festivities being located in actual hell). 

The day wore on and my eye grew worse, becoming more and more irritated the more I used it. Initially, it was just minor irritation—you know the feeling of your eyes being super dry and you kind of want to rub them a lot? One of those. Then, progressively, it kept getting more unbearable. Now my eye felt swollen and tender to the touch. By now, it had been several hours since I’d flushed my eye out but now I was experiencing sensitivity to light. A quick google search confirmed my fears: chemical burn. To the goddamn cornea. 

By the time the evening was well and over, my eye had swollen up so severely I couldn’t even keep it open, the surface an angry shade of red. Even light hurt, the very act of trying to keep my eye open almost as painful as the burn itself. 

When I got back home, I rinsed it once more this time with some saline solution instead of just water because that’s what the internet told me to do and tried to get some sleep. Hah! Good freaking luck. I tossed and turned all night, blowing my nose (because the saline solution had caused my nose to be runny), changing out my cold compress, and praying the throbbing on my eye would eventual cease. 

Sunday morning came after a very unsuccessful night of being unable to sleep and I broke down to call my optometrist. What if I needed to go to the emergency room? What if this burn continued to get worse and by not going, I could lose my vision? Though his office wasn’t open on Sundays, he did have an emergency line where I could reach him directly. 

Optometrist: Good morning, Lindsay, I got your message and you have nothing to worry about. I see this sort of thing all the time. Make sure to use some lubricating eye drops and a cold compress. You should be fine by Tuesday. If not, give me a call and I’ll take a look at your eye. 

Phew! I was going to be okay. Probably. Most likely. Sure, I look like I got beat up in a cage match because my eye is still hella swollen, I'm not in any danger of going blind from this monumental oversight.

It's been five whole days since I nearly blinded myself and am happy to report that minus a bit of minor swelling and redness, my eye is very nearly back to normal. I can see just fine though I have yet to put in any contacts. I think perhaps it would be wise for me to wait on that venture until my cornea is completely healed. And don't worry--I did throw out the demon contacts that started this whole mess.

Tl;dr Used a new hydrogen peroxide contact solution and burned my cornea. Good times. Lesson fucking learned.

At least I can say that this week has been interesting!

On much happier news, after forty seven long days of being unemployed, I am pleased to report that I am the new Resident Adviser with Mountain-N-Plains Real Estate. They're a property management company based out of Fort Collins and I start tomorrow! It feels very nearly surreal, to be completely honest. I'd started believing that I was going to be stuck working somewhere I would positively hate like a cold calling center trying to trick seniors on fixed income that their homes would be plundered without an absolutely excessive and hugely overpriced home security system. Or Walmart (and I loathe Wally World). But no, this feels like a good opportunity. At least I hope so.

Much of the last several years of my life has felt a bit listless, wandering from job to job, never quite figuring out what exactly it is that I want to do with myself. I know that there are two things for certain that I would really like to do: work for myself and work in publishing. The means by which I accomplish both of those tasks, however, is muddy at best. It would probably behoove me to go back to school at some point but financially that isn't feasible right now and the immediate need is to rebuild myself--get a better grip on my budget, build up my credit, and start seriously saving. I am quickly approaching the age at which blaming the folly of youth is no longer a reasonable excuse for my lack of a long term plan.

Finally, as I know this blog is getting exceedingly long, even for me, I just want to touch briefly on my #30Before30 list. So far, I've managed to stick to the long-term goals on the list--most especially my keto diet, blogging once a week (minus this one being late to due obvious circumstances), and reading a new book. One of my BFF's Lauren came over to the house today to give me a new book for my birthday, which I've decided will be my book for this next month of February. This all being said, there is one item on the list that is beginning to concern me: Do something for someone that they can't do for themselves. What does this even mean? I understand its purpose but how do I determine what that thing is?

Questions, questions, questions. Until next week!