I felt two flashes of annoyance and concern, then the thunder of a revelation: I was reading my texts without glasses! In a dark car! I could see the full palette of emojis, down to stripes on the zebras and holes in the Swiss cheese.
It wasn’t exactly when the Velvet Rabbit realizes he’s real, but it still felt memorable.
That evening, in the bright warmth of our dining room, I realized my lyrics were blurry again. I knew the drops could wear off within hours, and you can only use them once a day. But I still held my phone and then a book an arm’s length away, making my double chin even worse and not wanting to indulge in glasses. I felt like Charlie in ‘Flowers for Algernon’, slowly returning to my old self.
To make matters worse, the whites of my eyes had a pink tinge. Imagine Campbell’s tomato soup when you add an extra can of milk. My 20-year-old daughter assured me I didn’t look high: “But your bags are bigger than usual,” she said.
The next morning I put the drops in as soon as I woke up. This time I waited the recommended 10 minutes before turning on my contacts. I hadn’t been able to read the microscopic instructions the first round, so missed that detail. For someone as nearsighted as I am (my lens prescription is -9.50 in each eye), with outdated regular glasses, this extra time would have been worth it if Vuity had worked as promised. It didn’t.
Not only did my eyes maintain their bloodshot, rheumy cast for the five days I used the drops, my close-up vision never improved significantly enough to make reading glasses unnecessary. The drops also burned when they went in. I’m not talking about a sour kind of pain, more like a whip in your eye, but still unpleasant.
Vuity came in handy as I was walking within a few hours of taking a dose of Fig. I could stand in a corner, peek at my phone and understand what I was seeing without rummaging in my pocket for a pair of glasses that would fog up as soon as it touched my skin.
