It may sound inconceivable, but my eyesight isn’t perfect. As such, I wear contacts. Now, frugal cat that I am, I try to get as much wear and use out of my contacts as I can. Disposable contacts you use for two weeks and then throw away? Nonsense. Those puppies can last for months if not years.

You might think I’m joking, but I assure you I am not: the contacts I’m wearing today are the same ones I wore approximately two years ago. To put that into perspective, Britney Spears was only half crazy when I last wore a different pair of lenses.

Unfortunately, within the past two years I have moved. Sometime during the move process, unbeknownst to me, I lost my box of backup contact lenses. And, since I haven’t worn glasses since I was 14, this meant if the contacts I’m wearing ever became lost or defective, I’d be in big trouble.

On Monday, trouble found me.

Apparently, the contact lens in my left eye had a shelf life that ended Monday around 2:14 in the afternoon. It’s been bugging me ever since then. In my right eye, it feels as though I’m wearing your typical soft contact lens. In my left eye, it feels as though I’m wearing a rusty bottle cap.

Of course, since it’s been over a year since my last annual eye exam with my doctor, I needed to make a new appointment. So, on Monday, I called them. The earliest they could fit me in? July 8th!

Yesterday, I called my eye doctor’s office to see if they could give me an emergency contact lens to get me through until my July 8th appointment.

“We can only give samples to new patients,” the lady on the other end of the phone explained to me.

“Really,” I asked. “It’s been a few years, but I know in the past you’ve been able to give me a sample when I’m on my last pair of lenses and I needed a new one before my appointment.”

“They have really cut down on the samples they give us, so we can’t do that anymore,” she explains to me. “We can only give them to new patients.”

I wasn’t sure who “they” were, but I quickly moved on.

“If this is a question of money, I don’t have a problem BUYING a pair of contact lenses to get me through. I don’t expect you to give me a free sample. Heck, forget a pair, I only need ONE lens.”

“Sorry,” she tells me. “Our lenses come in boxes. We can’t break them up to sell one to you individually.”

Everything she was telling me very likely was true. However, I wasn’t getting that warm, fuzzy “we will do whatever we can to help you” vibe. You know, the kind of vibe you would expect from an eye doctor you’ve been going to for over FIFTEEN YEARS.

“Hypothetically,” I asked, pausing for effect, “what would I do if I lost this contact lens before my July 8th appointment? I’d be blind as a bat for two weeks.”

“Do you have glasses,” she asks.

“No, not since junior high,” I respond. I said this polite response instead of what immediately popped into my head: “If I had glasses I could wear, would we even be having this conversation?”

“Oh,” she replied.

And that was the conversation. She was about as helpful as a bag of oranges at a knife fight.

So, I had to make a choice: Do I persevere for two more weeks, with a rusty bottle cap in my left eye? Or do I find a new eye doctor?

Well, I chose the latter. And this doctor was able to fit me in for an appointment THIS MORNING at 11:00.

So, assuming all goes well and they have my new prescription in stock, my agony will soon be over.

I look forward to wearing these new contacts for the next two to three years…