Scared

During my four years as an undergrad, I got away with only one visit to the campus medical center. During the past month however, I've been to the med center five times. After my apparent case of pink eye cleared up, I put in my contacts for the first time in two weeks on Wednesday. I had to spend a really long time at work that day, so my contacts were in for about 15 hours. By the time I got home and was able to take them out, my eyes had gone from their pleasantly clear state from the morning back to raging red by the evening. I got worried the next day when they still didn't look better, so I called the med center to schedule an appointment with an actual opthalmologist, not just whoever drew the short straw to cover the urgent care on a Sunday afternoon. To make a long visit short, the new theory from my eye doctor is that I'm experiencing some sort of allergic reaction to my contacts or the solution. He gave me another solution to try next week after my eyes clear up (again) and I can try wearing contacts for a few hours at a time (again).

I did a little internet searching to see if this was, in fact, a "common" reaction that some contact wearers experience. I suppose it is, and according to some of these websites, it's not unusual for the allergy to develop after months or years of wearing contacts without any problems. That made me feel better until I started reading about giant papillary conjunctivitis and other more serious contact lens problems. The doctor also mentioned offhand yesterday that one alternative was to just not wear contact lenses anymore. My first reaction was, no way. The more I've thought about it over the past 24 hours, I'm absolutely convinced that there has to be another alternative - I can't not be able to wear contacts. Wearing glasses during regular life is just mildly annoying, but how am I supposed to run? How am I supposed to go rock climbing or do gymnastics or swim or go to waterparks or ride roller coasters?

I know it's a little premature to start worrying about all these things when it's entirely possible that using a different solution or wearing daily disposable contacts would fix this reaction that I'm having... but what if it doesn't? This whole thing is really scaring me.

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And I've realized that I'm totally going to become one of those old people who can't stop talking about their back pain and artificial hip.