my anomaly

today i spent the entire day at Alton Towers, which, to those of you unfamiliar with UK theme parks, is a theme park in the UK. it was a great day out, with Becky and her brother Ben, and a bunch of her co-workers. the sun was out the whole day, but it was still breezy enough to not be stifflingly hot. i think i may have even gotten a bit of a tan! being a Sunday, and a Sunday during summer, when school's out, college is out, and everyone is off from work, the park was full full full of people! we only managed to get in about 7 rides today, because the lines were quite long. remember that episode of South Park where Cartman buys a theme park with the inheritance his dead grandmother left him only to close it up so that no one else could ride the rides because he couldn't stand those "lines, lines, lines!!"? well that was how i felt, queueing up for each ride. everytime we were in a queue i felt like we were wasting so much time because half the day was spent queueing up, when we could've gotten on more rides!

in other slightly related highlights, let me tell you a funny story. not funny "ha-ha", but more funny "oh my gosh, fancy that!". because of today's trip, i wanted to get me a pair of contact lenses, so that i wouldn't have to worry about having to take my glasses on and off everytime i got on a ride. so sometime during the week i went to the optician's. the optometrist, Tim, who looked very much like a hotter version of Sting, did a rather thorough eye check-up, to see if my eyes were lens-compatible. he spent a rather long time looking in my eyes, which would've been quite romantic, had he not been shining a really bright pen-light into my eyes and asking me every now and then to "look left" or "look right" or "now up" or "now down". "perfect". he looked in my eyes with an eye-microscope, and again i did the "left, right, up, down, and again, now blink. again, please" routine.

then he went "hmm..."

and i went "hmm...?"

then he said that i had a lot of scarring on my cornea, and he asked me if i had previously injured my eye, or had any eye diseases in the past, to which i replied that i hadn't, and began freaking out just a little bit. scars? in my eye? is that why my vision is so blurred?

so he went "hmm..." then he reached into this drawer and said "i'm going to put a dye on your eye" and oh my if that wasn't the wierdest sensation in my eye ever! he dipped a cotton bud in something (i'm assuming it was the dye), and swiped it across my eye. not too pleasant.

after a few more rounds of "left, right, up, etc." he rubbed his chin and asked again, if i had had any eye diseases before. again, i told him no.

then he went "ahh, let me try another test" and he reached for my eyelids, and folded each one inside out! i used to do this to myself a lot when i was a kid to freak my mum out, but having someone else do it to me... unreal! and also, really, really wierd, and not at all pleasant!

then he said, with this funny smile on his face, "ahh... you have a rather odd anomaly."
"what? what?"
"your eyelid grows inward, which means..."
"what?"
"which means that your eyelashes brush against your cornea..."
"oh my God, what?"
"and everytime you blink, at least 3 or 4 eyelashes come in contact with your eye."

*silence*

"what?"
"haven't you ever felt it? any discomfort? dryness? gritty feeling in your eye"
"what? you mean my eyes are being scratched everytime i blink?"
"something like that, yes."
"by my eyelashes?"

i've always complained that i had no eyelashes, that my eyelashes were so short you could only see them with a microscope, or miraculous mascara. and because of all those years of eyelash-dissing, they've gone and attacked my eyeball! unleashed their vengeance and insecurities on my cornea! "make fun of us, will you? well how'd you like that?!" *scrape, scrape* "that's right, blink! blink away! unbeknownst to you, we're scraping away little bits of your eyeball every time!"

so that's that. i have some odd condition that means i scar my eyeballs everytime i blink. or, like, 35 times every minute (i'm guessing). so i didn't get my lens for this weekend; the optometrist said that before i get a lens prescription i should get my eyes checked by a specialist, to see whether it'd be okay for me to wear contacts. it could end up either being rather beneficial for me (in that the lens could actually protect my cornea from being scratched by my eyelashes), or not-so-beneficial (in that there might be a higher chance of the lens getting dirty, and my eyes getting infected). he gave me a letter to take to my GP, which probably says something like "this girl has freaky eyelids and vindictive eyelashes. refer to specialist immediately!!"

funny thing is, i've lived with this "condition" all my life. fancy that a trip to a theme park would be the reason behind me finally finding out about it.