burnt

Yesterday night was the worst night I've ever had. I was doing gel extraction all day and have been looking at my gels with the UV light illuminator. I usually don't wear goggles when working with the illuminator since it's only a few minutes. However, I used the illuminator multiple times and I didn't realized that the UV was starting to affect my eyes.

Around 9pm, I head to the bathroom before leaving for home. As most other girls would do, I looked into the mirror while washing my hands and realized that my eyeballs are blood-shot red. I know that my eyes are tired as my contact lens was getting dry. But I've worn the contacts for more than 24 hours straight and I know that once I get a chance to wash it, it'll be fine. So I didn't think it was a big deal and the redness was probably due to improper cleaning of my contacts. I got home around 10.30pm, took out my contacts and laze around before going off to bed at around 11.30pm.

At 12.30am, my eyes started hurting. It felt like I've been swimming without goggles in a highly chlorinated pool for hours. In Hokkien, I would describe it was very 'siap' and at the same time, 'si'. So I tried to open my eyes and tears started to fall. It was worse than crying as the tears came down like rain was dripping from my head downwards. It hurts even more and I had to squint my eyes shut. I groped my way to the bathroom in the dark, switched on the light and tried to open my eyes. I got to it after a while and realized that I can hardly see anything clearly. I washed my eyes as best as I could and it still hurts. Since there wasn't anything I could do about it, I went back to bed and tried to sleep. But all I could do was just lay on the bed and cried. I wasn't really crying either since it's not an emotional thing. The tears kept falling and in the end, I just cried myself to bed.

This morning, I woke up just a few minutes before my alarm clock rang. I tried to open my eyes and it was sealed shut with my dried tears. So I peeled open slowly and all I saw was a blurry image of my room. I thought I should try to adjust my eyes to the dark first so I hide under my blanket and opened my eyes. I could then open my eyes and tried to look around my room. It was still a little blur but decided to just get to work. Took my bath, washed up and I put on my glasses. I realized that it's still blur. That sucks. So I took a deep breath, peeled my eyes open and tried my best to put on my contacts without crying.

Got to work this morning wishing that I had stayed home. Unfortunately I've already made the cultures to prepare electrocompetent cells and I don't want to delay anymore as time is already running out. Felt better after a while but I still have to wear my sunglasses every once in a while when my eyes get too tired. Can't look at the computer screen for long either. Definitely not gonna run any gel or extract any DNA today. Hopefully I get to finish these cells early and get back into my room, close all the curtains and just stay in the dark.

Lesson learned..prevention is better than cure. Goggles shall be worn at all times when utilizing any equipment that emits UV light.