Tag: Eyes

Eye boogies

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When I was in middle school, sleepovers were a huge social happening. One of my friends had this amazing house that was perfect for sleepovers, with a guest bedroom over the garage where we could goof off without disturbing the rest of her family. We would giggle, chatter, laugh, gossip, and play silly games well into the night. She had a male cousin, Josh, around our age who would always come and hang out whenever she had these epic sleepover weekends. Socially he somehow managed to blend in seamlessly with a group full of girls. He would sleep in the house separately while all the girls slept in the room over the garage. During the day we would all watch movies, play games, and jump on the trampoline together. Somehow it just worked that he was like a brother to the group, annoying us a bit, but no flirting or awkwardness whatsoever. An impressive feat for a group of ungainly adolescents.

One morning during one of our sleepover weekends, as we groggily all got ready to roll into the kitchen for breakfast, I distinctly remember Josh rubbing his eyes and saying something like “I didn’t get all the eye boogies out yet.” Half my girlfriends all squealed at the fact that he used the word boogies. I would argue those were probably girls who didn’t have brothers. His word choice made me giggle and I was struck with the thought – other people get goop in their eyes too?

As a kid, most mornings I would wake up with stuff in my eyes. I remember at times I used to be paranoid that I had conjunctivitis! It never occurred to me that this happened to more people besides me. I felt such a sense of relief when Josh talked about his eye boogies. I thought, “oh thank god, it’s normal to have stuff in your eyes.”

Years later after my brother and his wife had their first “teddy bear eyed” baby, we were all together as a family talking. Somehow the topic of caring for small eyed babies came into conversation (riveting family small talk, I know). I think my brother’s wife was mentioning how she had to clean up the gunk on her newborn son’s tiny eyes each morning. My mom very shyly and humbly commented quietly on how she had to do this for all four of her kids. It melted my heart because my mother is an incredibly loving, selfless human. Her ability to patiently nurture her kids selflessly will forever humble me. It also made me laugh because I love conflict and speaking my mind, and here was my kind, quiet mom in almost a passive aggressive way essentially proudly telling my brother’s wife – no shit, that’s how you deal with kids with small eyes, get over it. She probably didn’t mean it that way, but I saw it as throwing shade over how to care for babies with small eyes. Hahahaha.

These two memories sit firmly in my mind in relation to my eye boogies. After my surgery, I don’t experience eye boogies in the morning nearly as much as I used to. I do continue to wonder if my fellow peeps with BPES also wake up with a little bit of goop in their eyes. Does that happen to everyone or is it specific to us buttoned eyed folk?

High all the time

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In college one of my favorite professors was my Spanish professor. I minored in Spanish so I had several classes with him throughout my time in college. He was from Spain and was just a stereotypical Spaniard in so many delightful ways. He brought the European approach to class and was much more laid back compared to US professors. He would get very homesick for Spain from time to time and we would have events outside of class related to Spanish culture. Sometimes he and a few other professors from the Spanish department, along with a group of students would go Latin dancing at a local Mexican restaurant for their salsa night. It was always lively and full of homesick student and professor expats. Between classes and off campus events, I felt like I’d had good interactions with him over the years and we had developed a positive student/teacher relationship.

Towards the end of my senior year, during one of our Spanish conversation classes, he casually mentioned in class discussion how I was always high in class. I was appalled. I felt I worked hard in his classes and I had earned his respect with my level of Spanish and as a serious student. I got good grades in his classes and I enjoyed having him as a professor. I also felt like we had spent enough time together that he would know me better than that. Our school was known for being very liberal, located in a smaller college town that is notorious for having a hippie, laid back counter cultural vibe. At the time I was in school, legalizing marijuana was something that wasn’t remotely taken seriously and it would be years before we started to see things like the law changes in Colorado and elsewhere at the state level. Weed smoking was really common and accepted around town, making the city a bit unusual at the time. That was not my thing. I was in college to get a degree, not to mess around. I was so annoyed, insulted, and irritated that my beloved professor thought I was stoned all the time. I felt like all my hard work was reduced to an incorrect stereotype based on my appearance.

My sister’s post last week about sleepy eyes got me thinking about people who misinterpret our BPES as us being high. This drives me nuts! I get so annoyed when from my perspective I feel it is very obvious based on our actions, environment, and behaviors that we are clearly NOT high from smoking weed. I think, how could this person be so stupid to think I was high? So many times in our lives, we have been mistaken for being Asian based on our BPES. It doesn’t happen as often, but we do get mistaken for people who are high all the time. I find it laughable, insulting, and just a little ridiculous. Writing this post, my heart sinks a bit as I dig up memories of my Spanish professor’s side comment. I still think back fondly on this professor, but his one comment so many years ago clearly left its mark on my psyche. ¡Que lástima!

Women with BPES

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Happy International Women’s Day! We love being women. BPES has given us a unique look and that only increases how fun it can be to be a woman with BPES. We’ve hinted at some of these topics on other pages on the site, but I thought I would bring them all together in a post centered around being a woman in honor of International Women’s Day.

Our BPES is based on a genetic mutation that happened when our great grandmother came down with pneumonia during her pregnancy. Between her illness and the treatment, this had an adverse affect on the fetus, leading to our telltale “trademark” as our father calls it – small teddy bear eyes. Or so the family urban legend goes. Our grandfather had “the eyes” and this was passed down to his children. Only the males in the family were born with BPES and not all of them had this condition. It created an interesting divide at times in my father’s family between those siblings who had this condition and those who did not. My family assumed it was a sex linked trait as only male children had the small eyes.

All that changed when my big sister was born.

She had small eyes, disproving the theory that this was a sex linked trait. Both my sister and I have BPES. We were always special as the only females in the family with this condition. A bit later our cousin was born with BPES as well. For me it is a special bond because so few of us have this condition. Now my brother’s youngest daughter joins our ranks. It’s fun to have a small group who understand things like the annoyance of figuring out how and if to use eye liner (although that is some years away for my brother’s daughter!) or just having to deal with dating men who don’t get your look.

Women define their own sense of self, femininity, and womanhood in different ways. Many bring childbearing into the equation of being a woman. For me as a woman with BPES, I am not bothered that I most likely can’t have kids. The infertility component of BPES doesn’t impact my sense of my own womanhood in any way. I feel like a complete woman (and then some!) even though I most likely can’t have kids. The infertility aspect of BPES is like water off a duck’s back for me. No big deal and doesn’t make me feel incomplete that I can’t bring life into this world. Everyone is on their own journey of course and others certainly could feel differently. I respect that.

BPES certainly impacts my overall identity. For me, it just rolls into my overall sense of self, which is strongly grounded in the fact that I am a woman. Riffing off of my sister’s post from last week, my condition does not define me. Hehe, a little tongue in cheek because as much as we dissect it here on the website, our condition doesn’t really impact our quality of life or inhibit us in any real way. We are fierce, strong, confident, sensual women, who happen to have small eyes. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Who run the world?

J3

Time marching across your face

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I have always been a Sex and the City fan. I remember when the show first came out and it was scandalous! As society and norms forever evolve, I think people lose sight of how revolutionary the show was when it first came out on HBO in 1998. It has been interesting to watch Sarah Jessica Parker’s trajectory over the last few decades, raising the classic question – can she ever shake being typecast as Carrie Bradshaw? I have been amazed over the years of how healthy and fit SJP continues to be as more and more time passes from that first episode almost 20 years ago. No matter how amazing these famous folks look as the years pass, there’s one tell tale sign that time is marching on – their eyes. SJP’s eyes show her age. For whatever reason it struck me one day that the best way for me to tell pictures of her between the early years of Sex and the City and now are via her eyes. In more recent photos, she looks just as great as she did in 1998, but her eyes are much more deep set and sunken in.

I was looking at myself in the mirror the other day and noticed that I too was showing my age via my eyes. With BPES, I’ve never had bags under my eyes or wrinkles in my eyelids, in part because my eyes aren’t as deep set as the average person. I just don’t have skin to wrinkle around my eyes. Even with smaller, shallower pupils, my eyes still somehow managed to age. I am fascinated by this. I continue to try to dissect what about my and SJP’s eyes makes us look “older.”  In the words of Dolly Parton’s character Truvy in the movie Steel Magnolias,  “Time marches on and sooner or later you realize it is marching across your face.” BPES or not, we cannot deny the passage of time (across our faces!).

J3

See Yourself in Others

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Over the holidays, we were very fortunate to have all of our immediate family in one place. That rarely happens nowadays. We typically spend December 24th at our grandmother’s house. We have cousins who live in our hometown that also have an open house on December 24th. In years past, we’ve done some ninja calendar management to make it to both houses in one night. This year, we weren’t really up for the challenge. Our younger brother took a slightly different approach to managing his family’s social holiday agenda. He came to see my grandmother a little earlier in the day, and then while the rest of us stayed at Nana’s house into the evening, he took his kids to visit our cousins at their holiday open house.

Something that I think is interesting about our family is that all four of us siblings have BPES. For my dad, only some of his siblings had BPES, while others did not. Likewise, for most of our cousins, not everyone had BPES. My sister and I were the first females in our family to have it. We thought that it was a sex linked genetic mutation, but my sister and I are proof that it is not! Our cousin, who lives in our hometown, has BPES along with his son and daughter.  His kids are slightly younger than my siblings and me so we were never in school together, but we aren’t too far apart in years. Oftentimes growing up, people in town would know that we were related because of our eyes. Complete strangers, like high school students working in the grocery store, would ask us at the check out, “Are you so and so’s cousin?” Until my brother’s daughter was born last year, I always felt a somewhat special bond with our female cousin because we three were the only females in our family with BPES. Now we are four! Still in the minority compared to all the male uncles and cousins that have BPES. The point being whenever someone on my dad’s side of the family has a child, we all wait in anticipation to see what their eyes will look like.

This holiday, it got me thinking, I wonder what it is like for our brother’s kids to see examples of people who look like them. Growing up, we were constantly exposed to family in our town and in nearby towns that looked like us. My brother lives many states away and his kids don’t interact with extended family as often as we did growing up. What is even more interesting is that not all of his kids have BPES. Of all our siblings our younger brother probably has the least pronounced BPES in his eyes. Growing up, we thought we were normal in part because we all looked alike. I never thought that it was anything special because all my siblings looked like me too and I spent most of my time with them as a kid. We just knew we had smaller eyes than most people, but we were like our dad. And lots of our uncles and cousins had it too. No big deal. We often had interactions with people who looked like us – completely affirming our identity and sense of self. We had a tribe.

I wonder if my brother’s kids even notice that two of them have small eyes and one of them does not. I’m curious if they even noticed when they were at my cousin’s house last month that my cousin and his kids look like them. I’ll have to ask my brother if this ever comes up in conversation. There’s a lot of discussion in various contexts about the importance of seeing someone like you in a given role or situation. It then helps you visualize yourself being able to be in that role. Did seeing my cousins help to normalize being small eyed for my brother’s kids? Or did they not even register it as they were chasing down cookies, hot cocoa, and candy canes and were too busy being kids? Hmmmm…

J3

There’s Something in Your Eye

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Since my adult eye surgery (that I go into detail about on our surgery page), I’ve only noticed one negative side effect. I sometimes get something stuck in my eye and it is nearly impossible to blink, cry, or flush it out. Immediately after surgery, I found that blinking to flush something out of my eye was completely ineffective. If I got something in my eye, like fuzz or dirt from the air, I would experience a sharp pain in my eye that was blinding. I wouldn’t be able to keep my eye open and I’d twitch a bit in pain. I couldn’t figure out what was going on exactly. I only know that somehow after my surgery if something gets in my eye, it is really hard to flush it out. Thankfully as time passed after surgery, this didn’t happen very often and I was much more careful about rubbing my eyes to avoid the situation.

I still don’t really understand why this happens. Unfortunately I’ve found the most effective way to deal with it is to lay my head down and close my eyes, basically going back to sleep and letting my body fix itself. I don’t always have the luxury to essentially sleep it off if something gets stuck in my eye. In December, as I was waking up for work, I rubbed my eyes a little more vigorously than I should have. All of a sudden I had sharp waves of pain whenever I tried to blink. Putting my head down didn’t work. Neither did crying, eye drops, or flushing my eye with water. As the minutes ticked by and it was getting to the time that I had to leave for work, I was freaking out. I was uncomfortable, annoyed, and a little scared. What was I supposed to do?

After a ten minute panic and lots of eye drops later, I ended up arranging to take a partial sick day and take some calls from home. I could not get this thing out of my eye and depending on where it floated around on my eye, I would have waves of pain and be unable to open my eye out of discomfort. I normally bike to work and with my eye acting that way, I did not feel comfortable or safe trying to bike without reliable vision. I took work calls from my couch, usually alternating between looking like a pirate with one eye closed in pain as I squinted at my computer screen and with shutting my eyes altogether. In between calls, my nose kept running. Since everything is connected, the irritation in my eye was causing overall congestion in my sinuses. I thought blowing my nose would bring relief, but it did not. I felt so stupid taking a sick day because I had something in my eye.

I feel silly writing this because I can’t even clearly explain what exactly is going on when I get something in my eye. Today it happened again while I was with my client and thankfully it wasn’t as bad as my sick day a month ago. Several times throughout the day, I had waves of sharp pains in my eye from what I can only assume was some environmental irritant. I should ask my eye doctor at my next appointment if they’ve ever heard of anything like this. In the meantime, I am really cautious about rubbing my eyes and how I carefully remove anything from my eye area. Small price to pay for being able to actually SEE, but I wonder if other people who’ve had the same surgery as me experience this. I also wonder why the heck this happens at all. Ugh – I wouldn’t go back to my adult eyes pre-surgery because they were practically closing, but I do miss the ability to be able to effectively blink and naturally flush irritants out of my eyes.

J3