Oh Og, yes. This is exactly how I felt. The feeling of wonder and amazement.
Ok, here’s some advice.
Make sure your hands are completely clean. Really, really clean. And then, make sure your finger is dry! This is difficult, because you usually pick up the contact with the same finger as the one you put it in with. Don’t. If that finger is dry, it will be less inclined to stick to your finger.
Hold your eye open.
Sit down while doing it.
Get a small mirror that can stand independently and tilt backwards, so you can lean directly over it.
Make sure you have plenty of light.
Don’t use tissues. (Fibers).
Pick it up, put it in your palm, make sure it’s not bent or twisted. Pick it up with your finger, by sliding your finger underneath it carefully. When you put it in. Just lean forward. Touch the cup part to your iris, and let go. It should be a one-second job. Your eye will instantly want to blink. Sometimes if the suction is not compelte it will get caught in your eyelash, or just fall out. Just take it out and do it again. Oh, and I’ve noticed if my eyes are too wet, as in tearing up, that makes it more difficult. I like to keep them moist but not leaking at all.
[QUOTE=woodstock989]
Hands up everyone who went from gas perm to soft…QUOTE]
My hand is up, up, up.
I started wearing contacts a couple months ago, after being bespectacled for the past 12 years. I have the same problem getting the lenses in sometimes, and mostly with my left eye. I have a hard time opening my eyes wide enough for my lashes to stay out of the way. In terms of dexterity, I found it helps to put in my left lense with my left hand, rather than using my right hand for both. I’m not left-handed, or even ambidextrous, but somehow that makes it easier for me.
It gets better soon, don’t worry. Took me about a week to get adjusted. Even now, I occaisionally have problems where it can take me up to 10 minutes getting the damn things in, but those cases are becoming increasingly infrequent.
Just curious, what brand of lenses and solution are you using?
Okay, I’ve been wearing soft lenses since I was in the third grade and I’m 22 now, so I have had over a decade of experience dealing with lenses. I don’t know where my glasses are now, so I’m very dependent on them.
Cleanliness is somewhat important, especially at the beginning. But you won’t want to go through such a rigourous routine after too long, but you’ll lean to cope after a while.
The best way is to shower in the morning before you put in your contacts. That tends to get your hands really clean. Especially shampooing the head, etc. Also, if you smoke, NEVER put them in with uncleaned hands. Something about the residue that is on your fingers gets on the contact lenses which will burn like you’ve never felt in your entire life, and you’ll be clawing your eyes out trying to get them out and stop the burning.
Here’s my method that serves me well. When you put in your lenses at night, place then in with the concave part facing upwards. The next day when you want to put them in, place your index finger in the “bowl part” Then take your left hand (if you are a rightie) and pinch it like you would to take it off your eye. Then take your right index finger and place it underneath it to get it ready to put it on your eye. Some people put a drop of solution in there to help it adhere to the eye better, but this can be a little frustrating because sometimes you put in too much and it will make it flip inside out. What I do is look straight foward and use my ring or index finger to pull down my eyelid. Then I place it on my eye. But it doesn’t have to be directly on the “sweet spot” for it to work. It will slide into position after a few blinks.
Okay, on telling if the lens is inside out or not: Some new lenses have numbers printed on them so you can tell by seeing if they are correct or not. Another way is to look at the shape of it. An inside-out lens will look like a bowl with a tapered edge. That is to say that the lens will have a curve to it, starting at the bottom and at the edge it will start to curve in the opposite direction like a sine wave (for the math geeks) The curve should continue uniformly.
After a while you’ll get the hang and not have to use a mirror and be able to judge naturally.
Oh, and I know this may sound scary, but rubbing your eyes is something that you will do especially if you have some dust in it or something. I sometimes can get rid of it by sliding the lens around my eye. I don’ t know how this work’s but it feels like I am sliding the lens away from the dirt which sticks to the eye (?) and then pushing it to the side with the edge of the lens as I move it back into place. Never apply any kind of downward force. Also the most scary thing is when it slides back to a part of your eye that you can’t reach! You’ll probably freak out, but just relax, there’s no danger that I’ve heard. Normally it will fold when this happens. You just sort of have to work through that. But it hasn’t happend to me (with the exeption of a couple of months ago) in a couple of years.
I have done lots of crazy things with mine. Once when I was camping, I forgot my case, so I tore a beer can in half and filled it with cooler water. Sure it burned a little when I put them in the next morning, but I don’t like sleeping with mine in. :eek:
Okay that’s all I can tell you, but I feel lucky to be able to wear contacts. You will feel that way too if your eyes get worse. But the dryness problem sounds bad. I don’t know what’s causing that. Some of the newer, “lighter” lenses that are actually supposed to allow oxygen to get to your eye really make my eyes dry.
Something else you might want to try: (assuming you’re a rightie) try putting the lens on your middle finger for the right eye, on your index finger for the left eye.
As for solutions, a lot of people find the Renu solutions suck (I’m one of them) - you might try the Opti-Free Express No Rub.
Blurriness shouldn’t be happening after only a couple of hours. If you have a copy of your Rx from the doc, check it against the boxes of contacts & make sure they gave you the right ones. If it’s right, go back to the doctor; they may need to tweak the Rx for you.
Wearing soft lenses is so much nicer than gas permeables - you’re paying the doc to make sure they’ve fitted you correctly, make sure you’re getting your money’s worth.
Good luck. 
Hang in there, Lightnin’ . . . it will get better!
Seconded: I had a very severe reaction to one of the “no rub” solutions. I had put my lenses in and headed to a friend’s house, and within 2 miles I had to pull over and go into the nearest public restroom (in a grocery store, IIRC) and take them out and put my glasses on. My eyes hurt so much that I was actually crying because of the pain (and frustration…see story below). Turns out that most of the soft lens solutions bothered me: I had to use the “almost water” sensitive eyes stuff. Funny, though, because I’ve used various gas permeable solutions for nearly 20 years with no problem.
I tried . . . and tried, and tried, and tried. 
Like FilmGeek, I have needed vision correction since I was 7 years old. I got gas permeable contact lenses when I was 13, and wore them with no problems for the next 17 years. Then, suddenly, around the time I turned 30 I started having problems: they actually scratch my eyes, very minutely, but after time some scar tissue will build up (which the lens continues to irritate) and I wind up with very red, painful eyes. At least, this is my understanding of what’s been going on. I see my ophthamologist once a year, and he has tried to fit me with soft lenses the past 3 visits (the most recent was around March-April of this year).
This last time, I was determined to find soft lenses that worked: the doc was telling me that I should really be wearing glasses all of the time because the gas perms were hurting my eyes, but no way was I ready to go back to glasses. We tried every brand of soft lens on the market that corrects for astigmatism, including a soft/gas perm hybrid that my doc hadn’t ever tried before but was willing to order for me, and they just would not fit my eye properly. They kept slipping off to the side, and even when he tried changing the weighting they just wouldn’t fit right on one of my eyes. So I’m back with the gas perms, but they hurt these days! I can’t have them in for much more than 8 hours without redness and irritation, and I get paranoid about the scar tissue building up again.
So guess what? I wear glasses most of the time now. I wear them to work, and I definitely wear them when I’m home. I’ve even worn them to school the whole semester – something I wouldn’t have imagined doing even 6 months ago, but there’s no way I could wear them all day at work and then until 10pm in class! I’ll still put in my lenses if I’m going out, or when I’m doing stuff on the weekends, but for all-day stuff I wear my glasses. My stupid, easily-smudged, no one can see my nice blue eyes now, no peripheral vision, the prescription isn’t quite right but I can’t afford new lenses yet, glasses. I thought that if I started wearing them regularly again I wouldn’t mind them as much, but I hate them. Hate them, I say! :mad: The only saving grace is that I got new frames when I got this prescription in the spring, so I don’t have my old oversized '80s glasses anymore. {grin}
Wow, I didn’t think this would turn into a massive rant . . . I’m just soooo frustrated by this whole contacts/glasses thing. I’m going to try a new optician as soon as I have some $$ saved, and am also starting to put money away toward laser eye surgery.
LOL! That’s exactly how I felt when I was trying out all of those soft lenses. I really felt like I had to pull on my eye to get the stupid things off my eyeballs!