Wednesday Lens Day

Gabriel’s prosthetic lens needs to be removed, cleaned with Johnson’s Baby Shampoo (they are serious about that no more tears thing), and reinserted once a week.  When we got back from Cali, Wednesday became the day. Gabriel knew that it would be special in some way. I would make his favorite dinner or pick him up a tube of drinkable M&M’s.  He knew he’d usually get an extra bedtime story, and extra snuggles and be reminded that I think he's a pretty awesome kid. 

What Gabriel did not know is how I started dreading Wendnesday on Friday nights.  He was never a witness to my pre lens change deep breathing sessions.  Never welcome to join in the glass of wine I’d slam…ummm…..sip before his shower. He doesn’t know about the crushing aversion to all eye abnormalities that I’ve had for most of my life. 

It’s a deep rooted psychosis for me.  I believe that it started with my contact lenses.  That’s a long story but I’m going to tell it anyway: Come with me for a moment, to Summer Time 1983.  

I was way too young to have contacts, had far too many allergies that resulted in itchy eyes and while it is true that contact lenses cannot slip behind your eye (popular misconception from the early days of contacts) it is also true that under the strains of heavy eye rubbing they can roll up-cigar style- and get wedged in the place where your eyeball is connected to your optic nerve.  That’s hot, right?

The ER staff, including my wonderful Aunt Rose, had never seen it before.  In Union, NJ at the tender age of 7, I was Patient Zero for Cigar-Rolled Contact Lens Syndrome.*  Turns out the cure for that particular syndrome is a bottle of eye wetting drops and one of those frighteningly large Q-tips. You know the ones.  They sit on the counter in your Doctor’s office right next to the tongue depressors and cotton balls in a silver capped glass container.  You’ve probably seen them and asked yourself what the heck they’re used for and then silently thanked God that you don’t really know.  

No sedation was involved…well, my parents might have popped some Valium, but I was stone cold sober and forever traumatized by the experience of having a doctor dig around behind my eye, with an inadequately moistened giant Q-tip, for a cigared contact lens as four stout orderlies held me down.  Believe it or not, there are no support groups for that.  

Maybe because of the lack of support my problem has extended to all areas of eye abnormalities, except lazy eyes (I don’t know why that is...I told you I never went to counseling).  You could be my best friend but if you pop a blood vessel in your eye I’m going to insist you wear either sunglasses or an eye patch in my presence until it heals.  

At an appointment just before Gabriel’s diagnosis they opened his left eye with a clamp, dimmed the lights and shone a penlight into it.  

I decided not to look.  

I didn’t look.  

And then I looked.   

His eye was open so wide that you could clearly see that it’s just a little ball stuck in his skull. There was my sweet, little infant child, looking like the Crypt Keeper.  I took a calming breath and turned my attention to a nearby poster promoting good eye health. 

No. No, I didn’t. 

 I sucked back a scream, covered my eyes and tried not to pee myself.  Yeah…I said tried.

The first time I inserted his lens was in the Doctor’s office in Cali.  My anxiety level was immeasurable. I could feel my pulse… in my forehead.  With everyone staring at me, hands shaking, after dropping it on the floor twice - I managed to get that sucker in.  I felt victorious.  I felt relieved. Then I remembered that I’d be doing it, once a week, until Gabriel develops the coordination to do it himself.

6 years later, here we are.  The lens change is still on Wednesday but there is no fanfare about the day.  Gabriel feels strange that moment when it comes out.  It took almost a year after the surgery for the lens to settle properly into his face. In the beginning you could definitely tell it was a fake eye, but just recently someone asked me which eye was which.

And you guys should see me.  No fear.  I slap that sucker in without thought these days.  It doesn’t bother me.  Even when he’s sick and it gets a little infected, it’s no problem for me. When the Zombie eye is revealed, I gaze at it fondly.

I’ve come so far. ^

You’re wondering what the moral of this long and nauseating story is, no doubt.  Well wonder no more, for I shall tell you. It’s a fairly simple one:  You can do it. 

You really can.  I promise.  Want to know how I know? Because I'm a much bigger wimp that you are and I can do it. Also, because you have no other choice.

Some eye problems require constant care.  You might initially think that you can’t do the things you need to do to take care of your child.  It might be administering hundreds of eye drops a day to a very reluctant little one.  It may be your own lens to insert. It might even be gluing your child’s eye lid shut post surgery.  I’m not making that up.  Some parents have to do that.  Not me. A fact that I thank my lucky star for because that sounds miserable!!  But if I had to do it I could. 

And so can you.

* There is a chance that Cigar-Rolled Contact Lens Syndrome is not a medically recognized term.

^ I still can’t look at you if you have a bloodspot in your eye. Let’s don’t get crazy now.