CHANGE YOUR CONTACTS

Yeah, I wrote a big in-depth post, but backspace fucked me over as it often does.

So here's the shortbread.

Over the past four months, I developed this condition that only presented itself whenever I was driving. It happened in phases, and I developed a new phase roughly every month.



Month 1 / Phase 1 : After 25 minutes of driving, my breathing gets hard and my face goes numb

Month 2 / Phase 2 : 5 minutes later, my whole head goes numb

Month 3 / Phase 3 : 5 minutes later, my arms go numb and I feel a throbbing in my head

Month 4 / Phase 4 : 5 minutes later, my whole body goes numb, and the throbbing becomes unbearable



Luckily, I rarely have to drive more than 30 minutes at a time, and the attacks would immediately begin to go away the second I got out of the car. But eight days ago I left for a party which was about fifty minutes away. On top of that, I developed a new phase. And this time, all of the previous phases occurred much quicker.

About 35 minutes in, I was passing Eupora and my whole body was numb. "Alright," I thought as my head throbbed, "This shit is getting pretty bad, but it's happened before..."

But then, I lost feeling in my arms. More than just the numbness. I could not control my fingers, and my vision began to blur. It was all I could do to slam on my brakes in the middle of the road, throw the car into park, and fall out of my seat like a sack of potatoes. If I'd driven another twenty seconds, I'm certain I would have blacked out, crashed, and died.

Luckily, a person I knew drove by. He took my to my grandpa's house, which was nearby. From there, we went to the Emergency Room. By the time we got there most of the feeling in my body had returned, but I felt... Off. I thought I'd lost braincells, because I felt a lot like how I always figured mentally impaired people felt. I was all up there in the head, but it was like a child with ADHD was controlling my body, and my reaction time was like three seconds. My speech was slurred and I couldn't focus. It was pretty fun, like riding a rollercoaster without a seat belt standing up.

Well, the ER put me through a bunch of tests, all of which came back negative, aside from an increased sodium level because I drink so much water.

So he sent me home, I got some rest, and I woke up feeling normal.

I scratched my head, wondered what in the world had happened, and went on my merry way. Fortunately my friends still had plenty of booze left, and I still had mine, so I called them up and we scheduled a follow-up party for the night after.

Many causes for my condition were suggested. My uncle thought I had an exhaust leak in my car, but we took it by the shop and they found nothing. My mom thought I was just hyperventilating for no reason.

La de da, I still had to drive places over the next few days, but the distances were short. I still had attacks, but I never drove long enough for them to reach dangerous levels. After the party, I went to my grandma's house to wait for the appointment I'd set at the clinic for Monday. But on like, Saturday, my aunt called me up with a possible solution.

Long story short, contacts are expensive as fuck, so I never listened to the doctor when they told me not to wear them for more than a month. By that point, I'd been wearing my current pair for seven months, with little changes in vision. I kept my eyes clean, so I figured, why the hell change them unless I lose them or they get damaged??

Well it turns out that if you wear a pair of contacts too long, they'll start to degenerate, and you'll develop a type of complex migraine stimulated by rapid motion that SOMEHOW cuts off your circulation.

I took out my contacts, went to sleep, woke up, and put a new pair in. Since then I've driven for periods of over an hour on three separate occasions, and I've had no issues.

The moral : Listen to your goddamn doctor, because the human body is fucking weird.

I was unaware that contacts will fuck your shit.

http://www.emedicinehealth.com/contact_lenses/article_em.htm

Just a few lovely things to breeze over. It could be worse though, you could be stuck
in the 1940's with THESE MONSTERS!




"These large hard contact lenses from 1940 were called 'haptic' or 'scleral' lenses because
rested only on the sclera or white outer portion of the eye. The un-sterile case is fitted
with blue velvet and contains the original rubber suction holder. The red silk lined lid is
marked Scrivens Ltd London and Midlands."

http://www.phisick.com/a5clens.htm

My problems have returned! Scratch that folks, wear those contacts as long as you bloody well please.

D: don't die on us Trigger.


Your symptoms kind of sound like they could just have been caused by an elevation change or something but if you've had them before than I guess it can't have been caused by moving.

I have ridiculously high blood pressure, and my car seat is at a weird angle. Also, I've lost something like 30 lbs, and this started gradually happening as I lost more and more weight. Iunno if these three things put together have caused some sort of nerve to pinch, but eh. I'm absolutely clueless, and so are the doctors I've seen.

Also it definitely isn't elevation change, because I didn't feel jack on the plane trip here, but it did have me worried.

Ah well. We all gotta die sometime. And damn, what a pretty corpse.