Okay, so I know that this was kinda discussed recently, but I can’t seem to find the thread, so I’m thinking that this was on the temp board. If not and you have the URL, please post!
Therefore, I bring up the discussion once more. I just got my very first pair of contacts yesterday after wearing glasses for the past 12 years or so. This is kinda weird.
Anyhoo, I know that I have pretty dry eyes for the most part. My father tried contacts years ago and just couldn’t wear what they had at the time because his eyes are too dry, and I think I inherited this less desirable trait. Well, I’ve got them in right now and when I blink, it gets pretty blurry and then takes a second or so to clear. Is this because my eyes are dry? Is it because they’re not used to having contacts in them? Anything I can do about this?
My vision gets blurry when my eyes are dry too. Get some rewetting drops. I always keep a couple of bottles on hand. If you go to Target or WalMart, you can get a big bottle of the generic drops for a couple of bucks. You might find that over time your eyes get used to the lenses and the dryness and blurriness gets better, but if not, talk to your eye doctor and see if another type of lenses might work better for you.
When your optometrist/optician first fitted your contacts, were they that bad? Or is it only after a prolonged period of wearing them that blinking makes your eyes blur?
I’d try drops first - I use any old kind of saline - but if that proved to be only a temporary solution, I’d recommend trying another brand of contacts. I spent about two months when I first got contacts trying out different brands (didn’t cost me anything since my optician kept giving my trial pairs) before I settled on a type that suited me.
Oh, one more thing: are you astigmatic? I am, slightly, and I when I wear lenses that are quite small in diameter, they tend to float up and blur my vision each time I blink (very noticeable if I’m wearing those novelty coloured lenses - the coloured part floats over my pupil). A bigger lense (or weighted lense if your astigmatism is more severe) is less likely to obscure your vision if it moves around when you blink.
Give contacts a go, they really are life-changing compared to glasses. Vision (especially if you are more myopic) is so much better. My glasses lenses are so strong that even though they’re high density the distortion is such that things really bulge. I don’t notice this until I swap back to contacts, at which point my computer monitor looks like a flat screen by comparison. It’s really quite weird.
To understand what I mean: hold your glasses in front of your eyes, then pull them further from your eyes a bit. See the distortion? Now push them closer. Big difference. Now imagine they were right against your eyeballs, how 360 degree vision and clear that would be.
Re dryness: some people do have dryer eyes than others, it’s unfortunate. Older people also get dryer eyes. Prolonged contact wear (over the years, not by the end of each day I mean, it’s a long term thing) also makes your eye fluid more viscous (sticky/thick) which decreases comfort. It also makes lenses more likely to build up protein deposits. However as mentioned above, eye drops are available to combat this. I believe it’s also reversible, if you stop wearing lenses, your fluid gradually become less viscous again.
Heat and dryness (air con) are also killers for lens wear. Here in the UAE, after FIFTEEN YEARS of full-time contact lens wear with no eye infections ever, I have had FOUR eye infections in the last six months. One time quite severely to the point of mild ulceration. The dusty desert heat and shockingly contrasting glacial air con in doors are most likely to blame.
Two infections came right after long-haul flights - airplanes are horrific for lens-wearers, best to wear glasses.
You know, don’t you, that you shouldn’t wear your contacts for more than two hours or so the first day? then four hours the next day, six hours the next, etc. Your eyes need to get used to them.
I am astigmatic, which means my contacts are weighted so they sit the right way on my eye. Sometimes when I blink or rub my eyes or tear a little they can turn, making my vision blurry, until they “fall” back down into the right position.
You should give this a month or so before you decide if this is a problem related to adjusting to contacts-wearing, or if it’s a permanent physiological incompatibility.
I highly recommend the suggestions above: the ‘fun’ part about contacts is that it can take awhile to find the right combination of lenses/lense types/saline/etc. that works with your eyes. A similar process happens when you get glasses, but it’s nowhere as near as noticable. (Think back to when you first got glasses… how much experimenting did you have to do to find frames that fit well, etc.?)
The fun part is going through all the kinds of lenses out there, and seeing what works. Some are so light and thin, once they’re in you can’t tell they’re there. Others are thicker, so you can feel them on your eye (which is an odd sensation). One lens I tried on felt really good on my eye, fit well, didn’t have problems with it rotating (I have astigmatism in one eye)… but it fit too well. I couldn’t get it off, and it took the eye doc a couple of mintues to pry it off. (And when it went… ping! Think of a cartoon when a balloon whizzes about the room, or when a bouncy ball gets dropped.)
If you can, get trial or travel sizes of the various lens cleaning solutions out there: it’s more expensive than getting the vat-o-eyeball-cleaning-juice, but they’ll last long enough for you to see how well your eyes react to them, and if they’re strong enough to clean your lenses properly. (That’s something that I think should be given out to all new contact wearers: a ‘gift basket’ with trial sizes of all the stuff out there.) It may be that your eyes and your contacts get along just fine, but the residue from your lens solution is causing the problem.
Yeah, they told me at the eye doctor to wear them for 6 hours the first day and then for two hours longer each additional day. I didn’t want to wear them to work (all day at a computer, crunching numbers, etc) because I want to ease myself into it a little more than that, so I wore them 4 hours the first night and then 5 again last night.
Still blurry around the edges sometimes and blinking still kinda screws with them, the re-wetting drops didn’t really do a whole lot to stop either. I’m still gonna give them the old college try, though. Might as well, I have nothing to lose. I have an appointment at the eye doctor on wednesday for my one week how-are-things-working-out dealie. These are still trial lenses and they want to see how they work out before I pay for any.
If the drops aren’t working, and your contacts are definitely moving, then you may have a problem with allergies.
I went through that same problem, and my optometrist discovered that I had little white bumps on the insides of my eyelids, caused by an allergy to the preservatives in most cleaning (and wetting) solutions. The only system I can use is UltraCare.