Background: I have an astigmatism in both eyes, but my left is at an odd angle so I’m never able to wear contacts right off the shelf. When I first got contacts back in '91, they were soft lenses, but very large and thick. Way thicker than any other contacts I’ve ever seen, but they worked great.
After several years, I moved away and tried to find a new optometrist. I’ve tried contacts several times, and they’ve never really worked. They won’t stay in the right orientation. My last eye doctor said, after looking at some spiffy new corneal topography map, that my cornea is too warped for standard soft contacts to work. We tried RGP lenses, but those had their own problems. She then said that we could try custom-made soft lenses, but they’re expensive and very thick and they cause the cornea to warp.
My question: Really? Could those first contact lenses have caused my corneas to warp and wearing them again would make it worse? I’ve tried searching, but I seem to only get information about warped corneas from Lasik pages. If custom contacts cause corneas to warp, why are they still on the market?
No idea, but I am astigmatic and I detest soft lenses with the hatred of ten thousand burning suns…I prefer gas perm lenses. The damned torics refuse to stay balanced on my eyes, so it is like looking through a rippled soft lens in a camera as it is being swirled around.
You’ll have to explain to me how the '91 contacts “worked great,” but that you’ve tried contacts several times and they’ve “never really worked.” It sounds like you had the best deal in the first place.
I, too, have a healthy astigmatism, but my experience has been that it is overdiagnosed by the doctors I have seen. It’s been at least ten years now, but I actually had an optometrist tell me she thought I was diabetic. It cost me a trip to the doctor’s office followed by: no worries, you are fine.
I think that some optometrists are eager beavers that are trying to do more than just measure your eye. After all, the machines can read your eye well enough. And when the doc asks you “better here, or here?”, chances are you can’t tell the difference.
I’m sorry I was confusing there. I meant that the original contacts worked well for the years that I wore them, but when I switched to more normal contacts (the kind I see other people wear), they wouldn’t stay in place.
I’ve also had optometrists give me conflicting info over the years. One says I have a problem getting my eyes to converge, the next one says that I don’t. I’ve never heard of only certain contacts causing permanent damage to the cornea, and it seems like if it were really that bad, why are they even still on the market.
I don’t have your problem, but have been told that I have done some minor damage to my eyes by wearing my monthly disposable contacts too long (sometimes I’ll go two months).
I’m trying to think what the specific damage was… certainly not ‘warped’ corneas. Something like burst blood vessels or somesuch. Or perhaps tiny scratches.
So, at any rate, my experience is that wearing contacts can cause some kind of damage.
No way. People who wear ortho-k/CRT contacts must wear them nightly as the cornea reshaping wears off in a few hours. The idea that soft contacts have permanently reshaped a cornea is pretty far out there.