Eye-carumba!

So I went back to the optometrists last night and I knew it was gonna be painful, since our health coverage offers $40/year for eye exams. And that's it - no money for glasses, contacts or anything else. Since my initial exam was $112, this falls kinda short. Not too mention $55 for a glasses fitting, $45 for the contact lens fitting, $190 for frames, $290 for lenses, $30 for vitamins (more later) and I haven't even got contacts yet!

I've been using the allergy eyedrops faithfully since I got them, but I had to be honest. They made a noticeable difference, but my eyes are hardly symptom free. The watering is mostly gone, but they do still get itchy. He took another look and gave me a more detailed explanation of what others have said - basically, I have sucky eyes for contacts. Over the eye itself is a mucus layer, a water layer and an oily layer. In an ideal world, they exist in a particular balance with each other, but in my eyes, the oily layer is too thick and the water layer too thin. This means that when I blink, the fluids are not distributed evenly over my eye, particularly when there's a contact getting in the way.

So, on his advice (and profit, I'm sure!) I'm trying a multi-vitamin that is "especially formulated" to alleviate dry eyes. I'm still not sure how it's supposed to be different from a regular vitamin, except that it's not a complete listing - mostly Vitamin B. However, it's not any more expensive than any other decent vitamin, so I'm willing to give it a try. Apparently, I should notice a difference in 3 weeks or so.

In the meantime, I popped in the new lenses he originally picked out and wandered around the store for a while. It was obvious to both me and him that the left one in particular just wasn't working. So we went back to work with all the doodads and refined the prescription. And, of course, the particular fit he arrived at wasn't one they had in stock, so I have another wait. I hope it's a bloody short one, 'cause we're going to Waterton this weekend and doing it without some kind of sunglasses is going to be painful.