my eyeballs are going to explode...

... seriously.

well, not quite but almost.

90 some percent of the time, i enjoy being a grad student. however a LARGE part of my research is working on the computer and programming. this does not do wonders for my vision. my eyes are dry a lot, especially when i work with my contacts in.... actually, for the past week, i've had a perpetual dull headache, centered around my eyes, and exacerbated by time spent doing the computer programming i need to get done.

so alas, this morning, i went in for my yearly eye exam. i wanted new glasses (my current ones are 7 years old and i rarely wear them because they're out of date and so scratched up). i expected the eye doctor to comment as usual on how dry my eyes are anymore, but other than talking about which of the over-the-counter eye drops are the most useful, that wasn't the big exciting result of this visit.

whenever you go for an eye checkup, they check the pressure in your eye with the air puff machine. the fluid pressure inside a normal eye is 10-21 whatever-they-measure-it-ins. my eye fluid pressure has always been on the high end of the spectrum... occasionally 22 or 23, but today i set a record: 26! (ocular hypertension... woohoo...). the eye doctor ran the test 3 times to be sure, then decided to do it the old school way (put neon orange dye in my eyes and then poke at them with a different machine) to confirm. presently this means nothing except that i'm high risk for other eye issues down the way (e.g. glaucoma), which would totally suck.

for now though, i just get to enjoy a perpetual dull ache that only gets worse when i do what i'm supposed to. if my eyes would actually explode, perhaps it would hurt less!

the end.