Having Houston Texans in your eyeballs (for Halloween or tailgating) is even more scary if you bought these from a rack at a flea market (Photo: Kirby Lee/USA Today Sports)
With Halloween closer than merely around the corner, you’re perhaps admiring your costume and contemplating add-ons. Wax lips, perhaps? An extra hole in your Charlie-Brown ghost sheet?
Those are fine. but if one idea happens to be those yellow or striped or whatever contact lenses you picked up at a flea market or nail salon somewhere, we’d like to make a tiny suggestion in as gentle a way as we know how:
DON’T EVEN THINK OF WEARING THEM.
This account Martin L. Faber, a therapeutic optometrist at Key-Whitman Eye Center, pretty much captures why this is an idea that is beyond silly. Reading this, I want to immediately flush the lenses I bought — oh wait; I didn’t buy any.
Anyway, he’s telling about a patient who did. She made her purchase at a nail salon, and here’s what happened next:
“She was given no instruction on how to insert, remove or sterilize the lenses, and consequently ended up with corneal ulcers,” he writes on this blog. ““Unfortunately, the young lady couldn’t get the lenses out of her eyes and delayed getting treatment because she was afraid to tell her parents.
“We were able to get the infection under control, but unfortunately, she ended up being legally blind in one eye.”
A corneal ulcer, as the name suggests, has to do with the cornea. It occurs when a bacterial infection occurs under the lens, and that tends to occur the lens doesn’t fit correctly. Contact lenses aren’t like muumuus; they’re not one-size-fits-all. You need to be fitted by a professional for them (a professional eye person, not a professional manicurist).
If, by the way, you ever experience any of these symptoms while wearing contact lenses — those that look bloodshot or your very own run-of-the-mill safe variety — check with your eye professional promptly:
Inability to remove them
Eye pain
Inflammation
General redness that doesn’t go away, coupled with increasing pain
Light sensitivity
Eyelid bumps
If you have your heart set on the decorative lenses, ask your eye professional, who just might be able to prescribe a pair.