I was experimenting with contact lenses, and put two in this morning. The right one worked fine. The left one wouldn’t center, and isn’t doing anything vision wise. So I bought some artificial tears, and tried to float it and nudge it to the right place. I finally gave up, and I’d like to remove it. And I can’t.
Maybe it’s not actually there? Pretty sure it is.
I’ll look up professionals, but any advice for stuff I can try at home would be welcome
Use the sides or flat of your finger to try and push it around to be sure it’s in there. Many a time my husband has gone scratching at his eye with his nail only to find the lens wasn’t there at all.
Are you having discomfort?
Also, to remove a lens, “pinch” the eyeball with the flat part of your finger.
No longer need answer fast. 
I ended up panicking and going to a local optometrist. She removed it, and said, “yeah, that was really far to the side, it would have been hard to get out.”
She hunted for a while to find it, but she handed it to me after she removed it, so I’m very certain she did so.
OUCH!!! My eye hurts in sympathy.
I vaguely recall hearing that a hypertonic saline solution (more salt than the body’s normal amount) will help an eyeball release such a thing, while a hypotonic (less salt) will make the lens tend to want to cling tight to the eyeball. Most lens solutions are isotonic.
So in theory, someone could have tried a higher-salt solution to irrigate, though I wouldn’t personally recommend it; homemade solutions have no preservatives (this was a thing in the early 1980s), and likely led to more than a few eye infections.
All in all, I’m very glad you went to a professional for this. I suspect it was quite uncomfortable in the interim, but at least you didn’t do yourself any damage.
Just a little irritation to the side of the eyeball. But she looked at the cornea and declared it looks perfect, and i didn’t injure it. Nothing that won’t heal overnight.
I thought about making saline solution, but didn’t want to mess with putting tap water into my eye, and it’s simpler to buy eye drops (my first attempt) than to buy distilled water and make saline. Eyes are pretty fragile.
Glad it turned out well!
I assume this was some form of soft contacts? I used to wear scleral contacts, which are rigid and can’t be removed by pinching them like soft contacts. You use a little suction cup gizmo to remove them (like this). Kinda unnerving at first to poke the thing directly into the center of your eye, until you get used to it. But I don’t think the suction cup would work on a soft lens.
yes, soft contacts.
If it happens again, hold you top and bottom lids open with your fingers and look down and to the left or right as far as you can. Repeat over and over switching to the left and right but moving the eye from one side to the other.
Normally a lens will drift up and by moving your eye down will cause the lens to move down, at least enough so that you can see it and remove it.
About once every few years I’ll get one that moves up above my top lid.
This wasn’t above the top lid, it was to the side, too close to the ear.
And i just paid the bill.
I hope that wasn’t too costly an accident, puzzlegal!
I can endlessly sympathize, as I wore contacts for decades (hard for the first 15 years or so, soft for 25 or 30 years after that). Wear 'em that long and you will have LOTS of stories - some funny and some scary.
The worst tale was probably when I went to the emergency room after losing a hard contact in one eye. A young doctor did the yucky pull-the-eyelid-back-over-a-Qtip trick, which I had never encountered before. I don’t think of myself as particularly squeamish, but that one really gets to me!
Anyway, he sent me home with a breezy, “don’t worry about it, I can’t find a thing, but it has probably rolled all the way back to the back of your eyeball where it may stay for years, who knows, and then pop out one day. But it won’t hurt you.” 
Thankfully for my ability to ever sleep again, I found the offending contact on the floor a few hours later.
At that time I didn’t know how medical training works, but after my college roommate went to med school, I learned enough about the process to realize that was probably a first-year that they’d slapped a white coat on and said, “here, take her - it’s not serious.” That “rolled to the back of your eye for possibly ever but won’t hurt you” bit was a load of crap.
You can use this method whether it’s stuck top, bottom, left or right.
If yours was stuck way off to the side towards your left ear you would
-look as far as you can to the right
-apply slight pressure with your finger tip to the left corner of your eye (on the skin, not the eyeball itself
-while applying pressure slowly look back toward the left
It should re-center it back on the pupil.
I’ve done the same for them being up too high and down too low by looking the opposite direction (up or down) applying pressure to the upper or lower lid and then looking the opposite way.
I’d been doing just that. I did it for about 15 minutes. Thought maybe my eye was dry and it was stuck, so i went it’s and bought eyedrops, tried again for another 15 minutes, and then noticed the white of my eye was turning red and my eye was getting sore. That’s when i started calling eye professionals.