Attack of Captain Red Eye

7:30 p.m., Saturday night during reading period.

“You want a blanket?” a kind voice asked as I laid my head down and curled up on a UHS exam table.

“Sure,” I answered, my voice shaky.

Not usually one to impose—I don’t even take water when a host offers—I had given up. I was prepared to lay there helplessly until they fixed me.

Unfortunately, no, garden parties had not gotten the best of me. Backyard day drinking was definitely not my scene given that each time I stepped into the sunlight, I was struck with an unbearable headache and an eye that was suddenly tearing up as though I had just been forced to rewatch Marissa Cooper’s tragic death on “The O.C.” (rest in peace, Coop).

When I woke up Saturday morning, ready to complain about only getting three hours of sleep, a quick look in the mirror shut me up. My right eye was completely red. Not red like, “Wow, your eye looks pretty bloodshot.” Red like someone had colored it in with a magic marker.

But I had a group presentation to give and I figured that if I just gave myself a break from my contacts, everything would be fine. Unfortunately, I have always been a die-hard contacts wearer, to the point where I have not updated my glasses prescription since I was 12. And while 12-year-old me didn’t have bad taste in frames, she did have better vision, and these lenses didn’t quite do the trick.

Donning a prescription out of date by nine years, I quickly made the dash from Leverett to meet my group in Mather. With my right eye squeezed shut and one hand blocking my face as I turned it away from the sun’s reach, I felt like a rat or some other nocturnal rodent scurrying painfully into the shock of broad daylight.

Six hours later, I met my blockmates for dinner. “What’s wrong with you?” one of them asked from about 15 feet away. I guess my eye situation had not improved.

I struggled through dinner. Everyone knew something was wrong as I failed to consume the mountain of garlic bread sitting on my plate.  In case you didn’t know, Saturday night is garlic bread night, and the reason Saturday evenings with HUDS will always trump a night out on the Square.

One of my roommates, a veteran of battles with her own eyes, stepped up to the plate. She taught me how to detect a stye, and brought me compresses made from hot tea bags. She also gave dirty looks to the girl at the end of the table who could not stop staring at us.

Not that I could blame her. I was sitting there curled up in a dining hall chair, holding teabags over my eye, and whining dramatically about how “I had just never felt this way before.” I winced each time I looked toward one of the chandeliers overhead, and spent the majority of the meal with my eyes closed, wrapped up in my own world, inserting random comments into the conversation.

After dinner my blockmates decided it was time for a family trip to UHS.  A few close calls with moving vehicles later (“Really, please don’t walk home alone”), they deposited me at Urgent Care. As I sat in the waiting room, realizing that just the light from my BlackBerry screen was headache-inducing, I gave up.

I dutifully followed a nurse to an exam room where I laid down on the table and resigned myself to the hands of UHS.

They were going to bring in an eye specialist, a voice said. “Okay,” I mumbled, not opening my eyes. I had slept five hours in the last two days and I was completely ready to spend the night on that UHS exam table, waiting for someone to ride in and diagnose me.

But I was quickly pulled out of my stupor. I heard the door open again and this time the voice was telling me I had to get up, get on the phone, talk to this specialist, write down this address, get in a cab, you’re going to Boston. What?

Suddenly I was in the office of an opthamologist: it was an infection in my cornea, probably caused by contact overuse (very, very guilty). He gave me antibiotic eye drops (great). I would need to take them every hour (okay). Including overnight (what?!).

So I spent the next few nights being rudely awoken by my obnoxious phone alarm more times than should ever be legal. The next few days were a blur, as I stumbled around in a world I saw through half-20/20, half-foggy vision. I eventually resorted to a pirate-esque eye patch to keep things in one perspective.

So what did I learn this reading period? Update your glasses more than once a decade? Wearing your contacts for 45 hours straight is a terrible idea? Both definitely valid lessons.

But I realized how important it is to find people who won’t run away from you when you come at them with a frighteningly red eye or a pirate eye patch and the inability to take care of yourself.

My project group was probably less than thrilled about my struggles on the day of our big presentation, but instead they offered me reassurance and the opportunity to take a nap if I needed it. My blockmates stuck with me through a tediously long dinner, and brought me the one thing they knew would make me feel better the next night (’Noch’s, duh). And in case I had ignored my alarm, my ever-vigilant father spent the next two nights waking himself up to call me at 1 a.m. And 3 a.m. And 5 a.m.

So reading period may not have turned out to be all the fun I had hoped, but at least I know that even if I decide to become a pirate when I grow up, I’ll still have some friends to crash with during my stays on the mainland.

—Elizabeth C. Pezza ’11 is a Sociology concentrator in Leverett House.  She wants to know: what’s black and white and red all over?