In my case I ended up with lesions that had to be treated with antibiotics, lubricating gel, and a kind of "bandage" contact lens, since the inflammation of the eyelids can cause further damage of the eye.
Please do be careful with your eyes. Don't sleep in your contacts, use lubricating drops, and if you feel debris or other discomfort, take them out!
I was lucky thanks to antibiotics warding off any potential infection. An infection coupled with an injury can threaten your sight. The prognosis is generally pretty good for minor epithilium and corneal damage, usually. For me, it was mind-alteringly painful, but after healing my vision is pretty much perfect with the glasses I had before. Despite being annoyed by my glasses, I am truly thankful that I can see! It is hard to communicate what 2 weeks in a dark room with the question of blindness stirring in your head can make you face.
contacts are really dangerous, and i feel like this is not emphasized nearly enough. i didn't even realize that as a contacts-wearer until i started to research lasik (i learned that wearing contacts was more likely to end up causing me vision problems than lasik, which is what convinced me to get it).
When I take off my glasses the distortion goes away, of course, but I can't read street signs, see people's expressions, watch movies, and other things. Watching an incredible sunset or mountain scene with my own eyes...it's like looking at a 200x100 pixel image Gaussian blurred to fill the whole field of view.
I might agree with you if my prescription is less, but TBH I wish I could get rid of these damn spectacles.
On the other hand, it did teach me a bit about philosophy. E.g. now I realize that to see the world "clearly" I require lenses, I just never noticed before. All of my perception is actually through lenses, not just my eyes. Touch, taste, smell, feeling, all distorted by my senses. And it feeds into my mind, the biggest, most distorted lens of all :)