A few questions about eyes and lenses

Factual Questions
1

A veritable buffet of questions, in fact. All eyeball related. (Do we have any optometrist-type Dopers?)

  1. A previous opthamologist refused to discuss them with me, because he’s incredibly unprofessional. But: Could I walk into the eye-care center at Wal-Mart, sit through a ten-minute exam, and request a perscription for extended-wear contacts? The ones you can leave in for a month at a time? I’m more than willing to pay however much extra they cost.
    1a. If I did so, would I have to give him my “medical history” wrt eyes? I know I had some manner of eye surgery when I was an infant and the same procedure when I was a kid (7 or 8 I think). I don’t know what it was, but it’s never effected my ‘candidacy’ for contact lenses. Would it matter if I just ignored it?

  2. How are the extended-wear lenses different from normal soft lenses? I sometimes fall asleep in my (normal) contacts. My eyes are very dry when I wake up. So I take the lens out, rinse it, and put it back in. I’ve never noticed any adverse effects - why can’t I just do this every day until the lens starts falling apart?

  3. When I was a kid, I was sort of cross-eyed (I think this is what the surgery was for). One of my eyes didn’t ‘look’ the same direction my other one did. There’s still a teeny amount of that left, if you’re really looking for it. It seems to be completely gone when I’m wearing my glasses, rather than contacts: is this possible or am I imagining things? Meaning: whatever that condition is, are glasses more effective at correcting it? It would seem odd, because I seem to recall being told it was a muscle problem.
    3a. If so, why on earth did they need to cut my eye open, twice?

  4. In addition to the cross-eyed-ness, I had some “lazy-eye” condition, where apparently, one of my eyes didn’t work as well as the other, which was treated by patching it. I’m not sure if it ‘worked’ or not: there’s a fairly significant difference between my vision in both eyes even still (meaning: the correction for my right eye is much greater than the left, to the point of glasses lenses being signifcantly different thicknesses). Is this a sign that it didn’t work? I recall there was a semi-recent IMHO thread about something similar, and a lot of stories of failure. Is there any way to really correct this? Or am I wrong entirely, and the two things are in no way connected?

  5. My parents say that since my dad has a history of glaucoma and cataracts, I’m at huge risk. True or not? If it’s true, why do I care? Isn’t glaucoma just, like, high eye-blood pressure?

Bonus question (in case you haven’t had enough): I’ve seen websites advertising methods to permanantly improve your vision by doing various exercises and such. These are utter crap, right?

2

Glaucoma isn’t something to be taken lightly if you have a family history of it. (I do as well, my mother has it.) Here is a page from the Mayo clinic giving more details about the disease. Listen to your parents, and get fully checked to be sure so you can get treatment if you need it, or breath a sigh of relief if you don’t. Good luck.

Bolding mine.

3

Yes.

There are a very very few people whose eyesight problems are due to weak eye muscles making it hard for them to focus correctly. These people can benefit from eye exercises. But for the other 99.999…% of us with bad eyes, it’s a complete waste of time.

4

I would just like to point out that an opthalmologist is a medical doctor who specializes in eyeballs. The guy at the eyeglass store is an optometrist.

5

Yessss… high intra-ocular pressure that causes blindness. Not something to be taken lightly.

6

I have this (though no surgery). Eyeglasses can correct for it. My Optometrist calls the correction factor “prisms”. I tried wearing contacts and couldn’t because you can’t make this correction in contacts. Actually you can, but the contacts must be specially made to maintain the same orientation on the eye. I think they weight the bottom or something.

7

friend ninjachick,

i am a glaucoma patient. it is common in my family. glaucoma is one of the leading causes of preventable blindness. i was diagnosed very early, before any loss of vision. it is very easily treated and monitored. i put a drop in each eye every morning, and see my eye doctor semi annually.
ray charles went blind due to glaucoma.

8

If your eyes are dry when you sleep in daily-wear contacts, they’ll be dry when you sleep in any contacts. Sleeping with contact lenses in your eyes is incredibly foolish, and I can’t believe the huge industry that’s grown up around encouraging people to do it (with FDA approval!). You’re not old enough to have encountered the negative effects of chronic abuse of your corneas, but you will if you keep it up.

Contacts lenses are for daytime wear, period.

Glaucoma is blindness caused by optic nerve destruction. Increased IOP doesn’t show up in all cases.

9

The guy at the eyeglass store is actually an optician; I think most of their training is learning to grind lenses and such. An optometrist is a professional degree (an O.D.); they can do eye exams and prescribe glasses and contacts, but not prescribe medications or do surgery (although some are trying to get that changed). An ophthalmologist is a physician (MD or DO), as you said, who specializes in eyes and can do pretty much whatever needs to be done with them.

10

I think it would be a bad idea to ignore your medical history. Are you sure it is not relevant?

My 2 year old daughter wears a lens in one eye for up to a week at a time, and she had surgery on that eye when she was 5 weeks old. So it is possible, but you need to make sure the lens is “breathable”.

The extended wear lenses let more oxygen through than the other kind do, because your cornea gets its oxygen from the air directly and not from your blood. This is the main difference, and is why it’s a bad idea to wear non-extended lenses for longer than recommended.

Well, I know one guy who is very far sighted, and he claims that if he takes his glasses off he can see better by crossing his eyes. He thinks that the cross-eye muscles are somehow “connected” to the focus muscles, so if you are far sighted, crossing your eyes can help you focus. You may be doing this subconsciously, and glasses could remove the need for this so your eyes uncross. But, this is a WAG based on one anecdote.

I don’t know. Do you know specifics about your surgery? It seems vague so I really have no idea what they did to you.

I would tend to believe that the weakness of one of your eyes is what led to the lazy eye. If patching hadn’t worked, you’d be blind in that eye. Lazy eye is a sign that your brain is giving up on seeing in one eye, and is often caused by one eye being inferior. The brain just gives up on the signal coming from that eye, and eventually will completely stop “listening” to that eye. After a certain age, this is permanent and even though your eye may be healthy, you will never see out of it.

This condition is called Amblyopia, and is often caused by the exact condition you describe, of having a much higher correction in one eye than the other.

Ignoring the thickness of your glasses, how well can you see with the glasses on? Can both eyes read road signs at the same distance? If so, then the patching worked perfectly. If you are not blind in one eye, the patching worked some.

11

With your history of eye problems I would definately stick to going to an opthamologist. If you don’t like your current one find another for a second opinion.
As for dry eyes with contacts when you wake up that’s pretty common.
I wear the 30 day continuous wear type and basic lubricating eyedrops in the morning (one drop each eye) immediately remedy the problem.

12

FWIW, I’ve been wearing the 30-day lenses for a year now, after having daily wear for 5 or 6 years prior. I have had no dry-eye problems upon waking, but occasionally after extended periods of wakefulness (in excess of 20 hours). I occasionally use lubricating drops, but in general, I never even realize they are there. I have to remind myself to change them every month.

As far as sleeping in your daily wear contacts as a general practice, according to my opthalmologist, this is a very bad idea. As pointed out above, your eye gets its oxygen from the air. Without this supply of oxygen, the cornea swells (edema) and your body starts trying to find other ways to supply oxygen, by growing blood vessels into the area. Bad things start to happen to your vision after this.

The edema associated with lack of oxygen is present even without contacts after a night’s sleep. This results in early-morning vision blurriness, but the is quickly corrected after waking. The extended wear contacts produce less edema than a night’s sleep. And even after sleeping the difference is miniscule.

Also, you can go to Wal-Mart and get a prescription for extended wear contacts if the opthamologist there deems it safe for your eyes. You can always seek a second opinion. Maybe a different doctor can explain why you may not be a good candidate for them.

13

Coming back to say, so far I’ve tested clear of glaucoma, but I need to be re-checked for it every so often because I can still develop it. You should keep going to an opthamologist, and listening to their recommendations wrt your eye correction. It’d be worse to be blind versus having to wear glasses sometimes, don’t you agree?

14

Reading your post yesterday led me to acquire disposable lenses from my optometrist during my appointment yesterday.

I, too, had been sleeping in my daily wear lenses and would also wake up with really dry eyes. I had also had one or two disappear during the night, only to find little cracked hard pieces of plastic in my bed. That in itself sucked.

Anyhoo, I just had my first night in the new lenses and my eyes did feel better in the morning. The lenses are most definitely more fragile though. It takes new adjustment to get used to the thin-ness of these lenses. They are much more flexible and can fold upon themselves on your eyeball.

All in all though, I believe that I will be happy with my purchase if only for the fact that I don’t have the feeling of desert sand in my eyes when I wake up. I told the doc that I’d been sleeping in the daily wear anyway, so I might as well buy something more appropriate for that use.

I’d say, give it a shot. I got 12 pair for $45 after VSP. Not a bad deal I suppose. I will definitely be checking out the online prices though when I actually receive the boxes with my script and curve on them. Good luck! I know how important it is to see the silly clock when you roll over at night.

15

I don’t need to repeat what everyone has said, I’ll just say this: always err on the side of extreme caution with your eyes. You only have two. Mess them up, and you’ll be really really sorry. Since it is entirely possible to mess up your eyes by wearing contacts for too long or being careless in other ways, be very careful!
(Wanna hear my horror stories? I used to wear gas perm. lenses, but did have problems with dry eyes. Eventually I started having pain if I left them in for too long–not overnight, but a couple of hours too long. Know why? I was tearing off cells when I removed the lenses! So much for gas perm contacts, I wore glasses for a few years.

I wore soft lenses for a while. I sometimes left them in for too long. Then, when I got new contacts, my eyes inexplicably didn’t like them; the whites of my eyes would swell up when I inserted them. This is extremely painful and grody. I’ve been wearing glasses again the last couple of years. I miss contacts, but not enough to try that again very soon.

I, too, have a parent with glaucoma and cataracts. He also has had several detached retinas. These are something to be very careful about. I’m looking at a lot of surgery in my future. We eye-problem people can all be very grateful indeed that opthamology has made such enormous strides in the past few years.)

16

NinjaChick, please see a qualified professional.

Thanks.

This is closed.

-xash
General Questions Moderator