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The original was posted on /r/tifu by /u/TwistySlideThrowaway on 2026-07-22 15:01:10+00:00.

About 20 years ago, I moved halfway across the country to live with my partner (now wife) and a friend. Before I moved, I was basically a hermit. I had no local friends and was extremely depressed, so I wasn't taking very good care of myself. Among other things, this meant that I didn't go to any kind of doctor for a couple years...including the eye doctor.

At the time, I wore two-week disposable soft contact lenses. When I got down to my last pair, rather than scheduling an eye exam to get more, I just kept wearing them long after the two weeks were past. Like, for over a year. I took them out every night and cleaned them, so I tried to tell myself it wasn't that bad. My eyes occasionally got red and itchy, but I thought that was just because of my allergies.

After I moved and started spending time with people again, I started to feel like I needed to make more of an effort to take care of myself. I didn't have a job yet (so no insurance, since this was before the ACA), but I still had some money that I'd saved, so I decided to start by seeing an optometrist. My partner needed new glasses, so we looked for one together and made appointments for the same day.

My partner went first. When she came back out to the waiting room, she said that the optometrist was really nice, funny, and laid back. They got along great. Then it was my turn. I walked into the exam room to find a man who looked exactly like Chuck Norris. They could have been twins; it was uncanny. We introduced ourselves and he asked me to take my contacts out so he could examine my eyes.

While the optometrist had been friendly in the beginning, things quickly took a turn for the worse when he asked me how long I'd been wearing those contact lenses. I wasn't sure, but gave my best guess. Then he said, "Has anyone ever talked to you about vessel growth in your corneas?" I said no, and he left the room for a couple minutes.

When be came back, he drew me a picture of an eye. He said, "This is your cornea. Your corneas need oxygen, and they usually get that from the air. But you've had those contact lenses in for so long, and they've gotten so dirty, that your corneas couldn't 'breathe' that way anymore. So your body found a new way to feed them, by growing blood vessels where no blood vessels should be."

I was horrified and asked if there was anything I could do about it. He said that he was going to give me the most breathable lenses on the market and that over time, the vessels would contract. They'd always be there, but they'd be much smaller and wouldn't cause any problems as long as I never did anything like that again. He was extremely stern...not quite yelling at me, but it was clear that he wanted to. Honestly, it was pretty intimidating, especially when he added that if I'd waited much longer to come in, I would have been permanently blinded. At that point, he drew lines to represent the blood vessels growing right across the pupil of the eye. He said that mine was the worst case he'd seen in all his years of practice.

By the time the supply of contact lenses this eye doctor gave me had run out, I had a job again...but with no benefits, so I couldn't afford an eye exam. I thought about the optometrist lecturing me and decided I'd just go back to glasses, and I'm still wearing glasses to this day. Every time I have my eyes examined by a new optometrist, they get all excited about the shriveled-up blood vessels in my corneas.

TL;DR - Kept wearing a pair of two-week disposable contact lenses for over a year and was lectured by an angry Dr. Chuck Norris, who told me it had caused blood vessels to grow all over my corneas and nearly blind me. See your optometrist every year or two, kids.

PS - In case anyone remembers my first post about breaking/spraining my ankle 15 years ago on a twisty slide, I finally made an appointment with an orthopedist! I'll find out how bad things actually are in a couple weeks.