I can see clearly now...or maybe not

Today I had my annual eye doctor appointment. I have to go each year in order to be able to buy more contacts, so I definitely don't go by choice. And actually, I went last year in August so you can tell that my years worth of contacts go a lot longer for me then they should because I don't pay attention to when I should be changing them (recommended every two weeks) and I just change them when they start to hurt...not too good, I know. So who knows how long I actually wear them :). I even still have a month's worth left but I figured I might as well go now anyway because I had already set aside the money.

Back to the point: today the doctor tells me that I have an astigmatism, which I never had before. Basically my cornea is shaped like a football. I guess it's pretty normal to get, but I just thought I never would so it caught me by surprise. But when she was checking my vision she would change the lenses on that eye thing and all of a sudden things were so sharp and clear, it was like I was seeing for the first time, ha ha. But it was different then when your prescription is off. My prescription is actually the same, I just have an astigmatism. I know what it is like to have my prescription change and I knew my prescription was the same, I just thought I was getting older so my eyes just weren't as good as they used to be. It was so wonderful to see so clearly!! But oh so brief.

Now we came to what contacts I would be wearing, because I would need new ones that compensated for that. The only thing I know is that my mom and one of my sisters have an astigmatism and they both wear hard contacts which freak me out - I wear soft. I know you're wondering why that would possibly freak me out, but I'm kind of weird about things like that and even getting soft contacts was big for me - it took me awhile to even be able to put them in on the first try. Hard contacts are hard, small and can totally get lost in your eye more or easily fall out. What's weird though is that the doctor didn't even offer those to me. I had just asked her if there were soft contacts that would work. It turns out there are soft contacts you can wear to help with that, but there is only one way they can fit on your eye to fit the football shape and since you can't obviously glue the contacts onto the eye (she used that example, which once again freaked me out) they can sometimes move a little out of place when you blink but you can blink them back into place (they are weighted on the bottom to hopefully always fit properly). Well the thought of my contact moving all over the place freaked me out too (man, I'm sounding kind of like a wuss). She had some I could try so she pulled them out. I put the first pair on and they felt like they were going to fall out. I took them out, cleaned them, checked them, and put them back in, but the same problem. So she brought out another pair - same thing. Apparently the way my eyes and eyelids are they cause the contact to flip out on the edge, so in essence they actually would fall out. Great. So, it looks like I won't be getting the awesome contacts that make everything sharper and clearer, but I've been doing fine thus far. She said it could even go away, who knows. But at least I hope that they make better contacts for it. In the end it kind of turns out good though because there is another appointment I would have to have which would cost more and the contacts cost twice as much anyway, so at least I'm saving money, eh?