My eyes were so dry. I kept applying Visine but this eye
drop never seemed to help. I was attempting to finish a 100 mile run in Tahoe
Rim Trail (TRT 100), near Carson, with extremely dry eyes.
The following day (Sunday), I thought of completing the run early, I
left my sunglasses in my drop bag. My run did not go as planned, so I was all
day out on the trail, without sunglasses. My eyes had gotten drier. The UV-Rays in higher altitude is much stronger. I was a little
alarmed but felt confidence that my eyes would not let me down.
I reach the finish line on stormy weather and did not worry
this time of my eyes situation. I slept lots of hours after the race, the same
thing the following day and the next day. My eyes however, has been its driest
condition, no sign of improvement.............
I thought that without wearing contacts, the symptoms would
ease but it did not.
I left a friend’s house located in Landmark, Sacramento –
when I noticed my eyes were failing me. As I entered the freeway and now the
sun is coming up, my eyes were unable to open and very sensitive to light.
In my lifetime, such symptoms never happened to me, not even the days when
I was in the desert – overly exposed to the sun. I pulled over to the shoulder
of the road and pray that I can continue to drive. I applied more visine… I was
thinking of calling 911. I really didn’t know what or how bad my eyes situation
was… I texted a friend, who live in Landmark, but I have not gotten any response. So I started driving
slowly in the hope that I won’t get involve in a car accident.
I reached my house, feelin' my eyes situation got worse. I was
unable to open my eyes for few seconds. Inside my house, I had to wear sunglasses.
A phone light made it so sensitive. I tried to seek help from friends. My
phone however was in the autolocked mode, that few seconds of not touching the phone,
it locks the screen.
It was a struggle for me. It reminded me how I was in the
mountain, so cold, that even fixing a shoe lace was such a difficult task. It
took about more than an hour of playing with my phone, that I thought the way to save my eyes was to just make phone calls (no text). No longer using the
contact list but a friend’s text made it easy to press the “call” button. I
spoke to him and told him to call my work and that I needed help urgently.
Soon my co-worker arrived and I tried to arrange everything
with my medical insurance a doctor’s appointment. I thought that such task
would be easy on phone…. Not so! I was asked to locate my medical record
number. I had my Kaiser card infront of me, and to my frustration, I couldn’t
even see the numbers on my card. I looked around my house to check what else I
couldn’t read. A microwave time, it used to be that I could see it feet away,
this time, even inches close, I couldn’t read the time. My eyes were failing fast!
My co-worker that I sometimes call “mum”, finally arrived.
She helped me with everything. I needed to be driven to the Kaiser Medical
Center in Folsom. Thankful, grateful and gratitude – the doctor that saw me did
not think that I had an eye infection but “sun blindness”. It was only this time that I
realized the effect of not wearing sunglasses while running at high altitude.
I was driven back home, but I told “mum” I will call another
friend to help me by, before she gets caught in a bad traffic. "Mum" left me.... but I was not able to summon helped after she left.
It must have been hours, that I was still blind……unable to
do anything. Slowly though, with the helped of prescribed eye drops, my vision was coming back.
Before midnight, my eyes improved. Thank you god for giving
me my eyes back J
There I was again, off to the High Sierras = this time with my sunglasses on :)
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