Searing Pain

Last night, I was making salsa, pico de gallo style. I diced up some tomatoes and onions, chopped some cilantro, added some garlic, and chopped up a jalapeno. Sprinkle on some salt, add some lime juice, and voila. It's good times.

At least, it was good times until bed time. I went to take out my contacts, and as soon as my finger touched my right eyeball to remove the contact, I felt a searing pain. My eye got all red and filled up with tears. The stinging went away pretty quickly, but it was bad times. Then I went to take out my other contact, and the pain was even worse and lasted a bit longer.

I knew that there must be jalapeno residue on my fingers to cause that sort of pain. I just can't figure out how that residue remained after I had washed my hands at least three times between cutting up said jalapeno and taking out my contacts. I had even washed my hands one more time for good measure between taking out the right contact and taking out the left one. It seems that made the problem worse.

Apparently it is very resilient stuff, because whatever was on my fingers last night did not rinse off of those contacts last night, all night in their case, or this morning when I gave them an extra rinse before trying to put them in. A little more searing pain when trying to put them in this morning was all I needed to know that they had to be tossed. It's annoying, since that pair was less than a week old, but I am not willing to put in pepper-spray contacts to see if the searing pain lessens after a couple of minutes of wearing them.

Note to self: do not expect mere soap and water to get jalapeno death juice off of your hands. Apparently I need to get some food-grade latex gloves before I cut up any more jalapenos.