Hi, so during winter break when i was back home in Greenland I found out about a week ago that my right eye is bad…REALLY bad. I won’t explain detail of it but the moral of the story is that i have to now wear eyepatch for a while. Like, a regular, black one. Nothing special
I go to relatively small university so it’s guaranteed many of people on campus have seen my face first semester.
Now this upcoming semester, I have to come back wearing an eyepatch! I am kind of person who likes to blend in with crowd and I’m afraid that people will stare a lot. I understand questions from people, especially from close friends at uni but I just HATE the stares! Even without eyepatch I got stares…
Anyway, this might be bad place to post this but I figured I could get opinions of people who are currently attending university, etc.
So, uh, any words of wisdom? Advice? Your opinions on a girl wearing an eyepatch? I’m afraid that I’m going to repel girls and boys from wanting/needing to talk to me.
I leave for the U.S in 5 days! Ack!
My advice is to roll with it. Make pirate jokes and say “ahoy matey” as a greeting. Seriously.
Six years I had a partial mastectomy followed by radiation. After a few weeks of radiation I started to burn, and my doctor decreed that I was to stop wearing a bra for 2 weeks.
I’m a high school teacher. In a coed high school. I teach math. So that means lots of extra help, sitting next to 15 year old boys. In a 50 year old body not wearing a bra. With a VERY uneven shape.
At the end of the day, you do what the doctors tell you to do. So I wore a T shirt and a sweater and a buttoned up blazer, and went to work. (One of my friends at work greeted me every single day with “Hey, bjkmom, how’s it hanging??”)
Your good friends will know in advance. As to the strangers, they’ll know that it’s something medical. We’ve all seen people wearing eyepatches, it’s not totally unheard of.
Take a deep breath, follow doctor’s orders, and get through this.
Perhaps your doctor can get you a “flesh colored” patch instead? When my daughter was younger, she had to wear an eye patch for several months, and they gave her something that resembled a large Band-Aid.
I’m a parent, but can still remember the embarrassment of being different and not wanting to stand out. I agree with the pirate greeting, and hopefully that will soften the awkwardness of interacting with strangers.
I also suggest you practice a one or two sentence answer for those that won’t dismiss their curiosity and keep asking questions. Something that admits “yes there was a medical problem, and we are dealing with it and it will heal with time”. Or whatever fits your situation. Whether it is a closer friend, a stupid stranger who won’t let it go, or a professor expressing concern, I think having a memorized answer will put you more at ease.
Quite a while ago, the Peanuts comic strip written by Charles Schulz, did a series in which Lucy Brown developed amblyopia and had to wear an eye patch. I would recommend looking that series up.
Having a few pirate jokes is good, but don’t go overboard.
I agree that a flesh colored eye patch would be much, much worse. I don’t think I’d be repelled from an eye patch. Intrigued maybe, so I might stare or try to look without staring, but not because I would be afraid of you or something. Maybe I’m idealizing the look, a la Nick Fury.
Anyway, it doesn’t have to be the defining feature of you. If you want, wear your hair extra cute or dress up a bit so that there’s something else that’s special each day about you aside from the eye patch. Then at least you can attribute some of the stares to something positive. Hopefully you won’t have to wear it for too long!
You’ll be fine. Seriously, just roll with it and sooner or later people will start to treat you normally. My friend had the same issue going into his first semester of college at WPI. He had this issue where part of his brain was deteriorating (scary, I know) which caused him to lose sight in his right eye so he had to wear an eyepatch to help it recover. He is now doing fine and better than ever, and even has a girlfriend. Don’t let this be your defining feature, if anything, it makes you more interesting person to talk to.
WonderV, don’t let people who are behaving borderline obnoxiously define your happiness. There will always be those who stare at your eyepatch and worse, a few obnoxious people who just won’t shut up asking questions. I have a few interesting physical attributes which have made me a target for such people most of my life. When I lived in another country with my husband for several years and people latched on to my obviously American accent (or the other physical attribute), I found that the best way to shut them down and get the point across to them was to say, very politely but also firmly: ‘I think that’s a personal question - don’t you?’ Most of the time they’d back off and realize they’d overstepped a boundary. Just be polite, firm, and hold your head high. And wear the eye patch. My daughter had to have an eye patch for 8 months and if she had not, she would have had serious vision problems. Good luck.
I would tell those close to you what happened, and for random people just say “Pirate fight.” or “You should see the other guy.” or “I’ll forgive you for asking, if you forgive me for not answering”