Hot Potato, Hot Potato: My Experience with the NYU Optometrist
I went to the doctor and they told me to put potatoes on my eyes.
A few days ago, someone posed a question in the NYU Local’s group slack: have any of you ever gone to the NYU eye doctor? I answered, yes, and all they did was tell me to put hot potatoes on my eye every night. This is my story.
It was Pride 2018 — my first Pride in New York City. I was, of course, very excited to experience a Pride celebration in the city where Pride started. But, with that came the knowledge that NYC Pride is a full-blown ~event~, and that I couldn’t just show up in a regular outfit and a rainbow flag and call it a day — I needed to show up in a LOOK.
I finally settled on one of the gayest ensembles I could put together — high-waisted denim shorts, a crop top that said “fruity” on it, fishnets, and Doc Marten heels: a femme and fabulous look with just enough edge to it. I wanted my outfit to scream, “I’m beautiful and I know it and Don’t Fuck With Me,” and I think I succeeded in that.
However, I was also still in my relatively beginner stages of doing my own makeup. I was able to do a pretty simple cat eye pretty well at that point, so I decided to take my eye makeup to the next level — I wanted glitter. So, I last-minute made the choice to throw some glitter all over my eyes.
Big Mistake. Huge Mistake.
Because I made this choice last minute, I didn’t look up how to properly apply glitter onto my eyelids — I just kinda swabbed on some glue and used a Q-Tip to smear to sparkles all over my eyelid. At first, it was fine; but by the end of the day, after sweating through a day of walking miles along the parade route and meeting up with friends and seeing what bars we wanted to go to, the glitter and the glue had all by melted off my face. Exhausted, and inebriated, I carelessly used a single makeup wipe and washed my face before going to bed.
The next morning, I woe up with my eye swollen and in pain — I had gotten a lovely thing called a stye, on both of my eyes. After realizing that copious amounts of Advil and allergy meds weren’t gonna help make it actually go away, I finally booked an appointment at NYU’s an eye doctor.
They told me it was a stye, and that the best way to treat it would be to warm up potatoes and put them on my eyes until the potato cooled off at least once or twice a day until the stye finally disappeared. And thus, the hot potatoes were added to my beauty regime for about a week or so. I really was living the glamorous gay NYC lifestyle I always wanted.
However, I feel like I should also say that the NYU Optometrist was a lovely experience, the doctors and staff were all incredibly nice, welcoming, informative, and professional, and their medical advice absolutely worked. You can find more information at NYU Optometry here.
