It comes in 3's!

Problems come in threes. They always have. January- start the year off by getting the three out of the way. Not a bad plan I guess.
Number 1- It started off with my grant expiring. I'm counting that as one of the 3. It better be :) I knew it was coming for 18 months but the whole time there was the possibility of being hired after. Legislature cut that possibility out. Oh well. I just need a job for a few months. I worked at the U of U bookstore all January to help with the massive orders of textbooks. I miss customer service. Such funny things happen, tho they're usually just funny to the person on the business end. I'll find something. Have a few interviews coming up.
Number 2- January 10- my car was totaled. See my last post here. I have a few chiropractor appointments left and then I"ll be good as new.
Number 3- January 20- Friday morning I woke up at 4 am with my eyes burning. I was sure it was because I fell asleep with my contacts in. I took them out of my dry eyes and went back to bed. 6:00 am... PAIN! I'm awake and not getting sleep anytime soon. My eyes burned. I turned on the light in the bathroom (OW! Turned it off) my eyes were RED. Must be red eye. Darn eyes are too dry. That's it. I put in some visine and Matt went to get red eye drops for me (the first of many Doctor Matt/caring husband points he earned that weekend). With drops in and my eyes not feeling much better, Matt took me to the Archives all the while wanting to take me to the doctor. I was there from 8-12:30. What usually took me 15 minutes took me an hour. All I had to do was label folders. The lights above my cubicle were off, but the room seemed bright to me. I could look at the black computer tower and dark gray carpet just fine (so my eyes must be ok, they're just sensitive for some reason). I would look at a report, grab the manila folder (which seemed very bright), look at the floor for a while and then write the title and year on the folder, put in the report and put that file in its box. At 12 was a potato bar in my honor (the only reason I went in that day). Gratitude for the grant and 'volunteer appreciation'. It felt like a good-bye party. I even got a "we'll miss you" card from a co-worker. Huh. I'm planning on being here Monday. Everyone wondered what was wrong with my eyes. Barely open, bright red. Eye surgery? Allergies? No. I ended up spending most of the time in the break room because all the lights on in the meeting room was too much. I left at 12:30 to catch TRAX (as my car was totaled on the 10th).
Trax- that's an adventure. Very well lit train. I sat in a seat, covered my eyes as they watered. So I'm crying.. my eyes are running, therefore my nose is running. What were people thinking when they saw this woman on the train breaking down? One guy tapped my sholder. "Miss?" I managed to look up to see concerned eyes and missing teeth, then closed my eyes. "You ok?" "Yes, it's just my eyes." I left it at that and everyone left me alone. Mom picked me up and gave me some sunglasses and shades. It was much better looking behind all those dark lenses. At the house I closed the blinds to the front window and the back glass door and then worked on the floor. I'm amazed I got the math right on those deposits. I was holding checks an inch from my face to see the check numbers and amounts. After that my parents insisted I rest. Dad took me home so I could get ready for Brian Regan's show at Abravanel Hall.
Thanks to Matt's Bells Palsy in 2010 there's an eye patch at home! I put that on, wore the shades and was ready to go to Abravanel Hall and listen to Brian Regan's fantastic comedy (Matt leading me like a blind woman the whole while). Get parked, showed our tickets, got to our seats and then 5 minutes before show time someone else came looking for his seat. "That's my seat." Matt says. They compare tickets. Strange. The guy goes to talk to someone when the person sitting next to Matt mentions our ticket says "Thursday January 26th"... Oh! Matt catches the guy, takes care of getting in on the 26th and we went home. I went into bed, lights off and just waited for sleep to take the edge off. Matt called the doctor instead of doing homework. We saw him at 10pm.
I held my eyes open while the doctor shone a blue then white light in each eye. Then the news. "There's no easy way to say this, so I'll just tell you. When you took out your contacts you ripped off several layers of your cornea." Matt covers his mouth. More off the right eye than the left. Good news- it'll heal and my sight can return to what it was. (Oh, and apparently using Visine makes the pain worse. Lovely. He gave me some artificial tears which allowed me to sleep the next morning. I didn't sleep at all Friday night. I don't think Matt got much either. I was sqeezing his hand as hard as I could most of the time.) Anyway, the doctor gave me some wonderful drops that changed the 10 day heal/burn period to 3! The next day Matt was the caring doctor/husband. We had all lights off but the fishtank and his laptop. He'd wake me when I needed to put some medicine in my eyes.
Sunday I could see much better in my left eye. We went to a friend's ward (Matt was giving him the Melchezedik Priesthood. It was awesome!) By Monday it was healed enough I didn't need drops anymore. I still put drops in once a day (instead of 3 times) in my right. The vision is slightly fuzzy, like I need a new perscription of glasses. I had a follow up appointment this morning. My right eye is still recovering from the evil contacts and I need to put in some of the artificial tears before I read. I am grateful to have my eyes back! I'm thankful to live in a time when I can have glasses!!