New contacts prescription. Is it wrong, or am I adjusting?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Got a new contacts prescription just before Christmas. Began to wear it ten days ago.

For the first week, I was traveling and didn’t have my computer. Everything I looked at was either several feet+ away or my cell phone, held right in front of my nose. New prescription seemed fine.

Now we are home, and I am trying to use my laptop computer. With the new contacts in, I have awful trouble with the computer screen seeming blurry. If I take out the contacts and put on glasses with my old prescription, it’s instantly clear as crystal.

I don’t remember my old contacts causing this problem, so I don’t think it’s a glasses vs. contacts issue. I know new prescriptions can take a while to get used to. Is that what’s happening, or do you think the new prescription (one-quarter diopter change in both eyes) might be wrong?

2

My first thought, upon reading the title, was that new scrips, especially for contacts, always feel wrong at first. But they should only feel wrong for a day or two.
.25 is hardly a change, I mean it’s a change and if you don’t have a strong prescription to begin with, it’s certainly noticeable.

Did you feel like you needed a new script to begin with? Did anything else change WRT to your old contacts vs your new ones? That is, did the base curve, diameter and brand stay the same? I assume they didn’t add or remove any astigmatism adjustments.

If every single thing is identical and they only thing that changed was that your script went from, say -2.50 to -2.75, I’d say something’s wrong. I’d probably start by putting in a new lenses and see if that does anything. You could even call the eye doctor and ask for some samples.

I’m also assuming that you’ve been wearing contacts for a while so you probably already know this but it’s worth repeating. Is it possible one is inside out or if you don’t have the same script in both eyes that you have in the wrong sides?

And, with all that said, if you changed brands or sizes, I’d start with that being the culprit. Sometimes if you change brands, you need to fiddle around with the size or they won’t feel right.

Oh, and did you make sure that the script on the box matches the script the doctor wrote AND that the script the doctor wrote makes sense. IOW when the doctor said ‘yup, let’s bump those up another quarter’ it didn’t go from -2.50 to -2.25. Mistakes do get made. A lot of people handle your lenses between the doctor writing it and you putting them in your eye.

3

You may have developed slightly wonky eyeballs. Contacts do not correct for astigmatism unless you specifically get some designed to do so – glasses are automatically ground for it. If the astigmatism is slight, it might not be obvious at phone distance, but becomes more so when reading fine-grained text at computer distance.

Is it more obvious when looking up/down/off to the sides than straight ahead? If you changed brands or got the wrong box, they might be smaller than you’re used to, and you’re seeing the refraction from the edge of the lens.

4

Thanks for the informative replies, both of you. The contacts are the same brand I’ve worn for years, so I don’t think that’s the problem. Looking at the prescription, though, he may have bumped up my right eye significantly. More than the .25 I assumed at first. Unfortunately, I don’t have my old prescription anymore to compare :stuck_out_tongue:

I do have astigmatism, and I wear toric lenses to correct it.

I scheduled a follow-up visit, which won’t happen for two weeks. If they’re still driving me crazy then I’ll have him do his magic machine thing on my old glasses to re-discover my old prescription, which I was perfectly happy with.

5

Contacts are kinda funny. I love them, but I’ve certainly had some feel ‘off’ and had to go back and get new ones. I understand why most eye doctors will give you one set of lenses and have you come back a week or two later to order the rest when you change something about them. I’ve also learned in my 20 something years that there’s an art to getting them right. It’s not just about the script, but also the size, and on top of that, not all lenses come in all sizes so sometimes they have to pick one and if it doesn’t work you try the other.

Furthermore, WRT an astigmatism, one of my eye doctors mentioned that I have a very, very slight one, not with spending the extra money on toric lenses, so she adjusted the script stronger (?) to make up for it. On the one hand, there’s a formula for it, OTOH, going back to ‘it’s an art’, my next doctor went back to the old script for one reason or another.

If this is the same doctor as always, he should have all your old scripts on file and within an arm’s length when you go back in. It should be no big deal for you to ask what the old one is and what the new one is. You might even bring the boxes in with you just to make sure they’re correct. Like I mentioned earlier, mistakes happen. Maybe he’ll look at his notes and say ‘wow, you’re right, you were at -1.25, why do you have -2.00 now, that’s strange’.

A few things, if he feels everything is kosher, you might ask for some samples, just to make sure there’s not something wrong with the lot that you have (long shot, but he’ll probably go for it). Second, if he’s an optometrist, you may want to see an ophthalmologist. Heck, I just go to Sam’s Club every couple of years for a $50 eye check/contact fitting when I need more lenses, but every 4 or 5 years I see my ophthalmologist because something is bugging me and he’s more thorough. (In my case, one isn’t better than the other, luckily, it’s just sort of a second opinion from a doctor I’ve known for a long time).