Post 4 - Senses and Stuff

    As the daughter of an optometrist and a wearer of contact lenses, I diligently clean my contacts every morning. Now, this constant cleaning may seem somewhat unnecessary; after all, my contacts are actually hard lenses that never leave the controlled environment of the inside of my house because I wear them during the night. However, for those of you who don't have the time to routinely undergo the grueling ordeal of cleaning your lenses - be they hard or soft - every morning, it may benefit you and your vision to know about a certain microbial corneal infection called acanthamoeba keratitis - or, more simply put, a brain-eating amoeba with the potential to infect your eye.

According to Mike McKnight and Jordan Gartner of KKTV, a young woman infected with the amoeba administered about 60 eye drops a day while waiting on the possibility of getting a corneal transplant. She suspects the infection originated from a lake she visited in the summer or yard work she performed without eye protection, and she says that if her eye is saved, she'll be much more careful with her contacts.

Although cases of keratitis are quite rare, a corneal surgeon at Midwest Eye Care recommends that in addition to regularly cleaning your contacts, try to avoid swimming or sleeping with them in. Of course, exceptions exist, so if you have questions about the schedule you should use for cleaning your contacts or activities you want to experience while wearing your lenses, you should ask your optometrist. Not asking a potentially dumb question is not worth more than acquiring a brain-eating eye infection. (It rhymes, so you know it's true.)

Also I took the color test. I suspect that being a female artist helps somehow.