I’ve been wearing hard (gas permeable) contacts for as long as I can remember. Now, in my early fifties, they aren’t as comfortable as they used to be. Anybody have any recommendations what I should switch to? I know soft lenses come in a variety of types: daily wear, weekly wear, extended wear, under wear… probably more than I know of. Any advantages or disadvantages I should be aware of? Anything to seek/avoid?
Or is it just time to just admit I’m old and start wearing glasses? Or to deny that I’m old and get lasik? Nah, I think I’ll stick with contacts. Advice cheerfully sought! Thanks, gang…
Whatever your optometrist recommends. I assume you do have glasses, as you can’t wear RGPs that long. It also depends on your own personal wear schedule: if you are the type of person who forgets to toss lenses then the longer wear ones might be best, or if you lose them all the time then the shorter-term ones might be better. Transitioning from RGP I’d think that the monthlies are closest to your previous use. Also, silicone hydrogel lenses are (one of) the healthiest to wear, much like RGP. Personally, I don’t get the point of dailies, and I would not be comfortable wearing them to bed.
Brands: Acuvue is the cheapest often. I used PureVision, they’re ok. If you have severe astigmatism be prepared to pay out the ass. Oh, and my optometrist put three brands on my prescription so I can buy any, pretty convenient.
Becoming old means you have to start wearing glasses, but it has nothing to with your current problem or LASIK. Old people have trouble seeing things close up, no (necessarily) far away.
Just a personal note, but the dailies have seriously changed my life. I feel bad because it seems wasteful, but it’s soooo worth it. Just throw them away on your way to bed. No more fiddly rubbing, fumbling with the bloody container, wondering if the contact even went in the container because you can’t f-ing see it, suddenly running out of fluid. No more. Just throw them away.
When my optometrist has recommended trying a different brand of contact lenses, he has given me a trial pair, or sometimes an entire package, to take home and wear for a few days before making a decision about which contact lenses to order. See if your optometrist will let you do that as well.
Speaking from personal experience, soft contact lenses are the only type I’ve ever worn. I’m not sure how similar or dissimilar wearing soft lenses are from wearing hard lenses, but here are my comments:
(1) Is it possible to rub hard contact lenses to clean them? I’m asking because rubbing my contact lenses has tremendously increased their wear time. I wear the types of contacts that typically last about two weeks. Mine were only lasting me a week, so I asked my eye doctor for advice. Even though I was soaking them in No Rub solution, he suggested going ahead and rubbing them anyways. After switching to that method, my contacts last for at least a month, usually longer.
(2) Just because a company advertises that you can wear their lenses overnight, doesn’t mean it’s true. This may be a personal problem, because I have known people who can sleep in contact lenses with very little irritation. But when I sleep in my contacts, they stop conforming to my eye properly, even though these contact lenses are designed to be able to withstand 24/7 wear.
So I guess to summarize, don’t trust advertisers. Just because the solution says you don’t need to rub your contacts doesn’t mean you shouldn’t rub them, just because the package says they’ll last two weeks doesn’t mean that’s how long they’ll last, and just because the package says they’re safe for night-time use doesn’t mean you’ll be able to sleep in them without ruining them.
Maybe I just confused you more than I helped you. Sorry.
Yes, rubbing them is the whole point. There are normally two containers, a milky white cleaner (don’t put in eye!), and a clear rinsing/rewetting solution. Now they have 2-in-1 formulations, but my optometrist at the time didn’t recommend them. But what do you mean by “lasting”?
Yeah, personal comfort is the limiting factor.
Personally, I found both RGP and soft lenses to be comfortable but uncomfortable at times. The RGPs just require an initial period of increasing wearing periods to get used to. The main reason I quit RGPs is that sometimes they’d slip off my cornea, and my entire eye was so swollen I could not move it on top to take it out (RGP removal is different, you have to pinch your eyelids at the corner). So basically I have to have an uncomfortable contact in the corner of my eye for 30 mins plus until the swelling subsides. If you have see RGPs, imagine dropping one on a tile floor, and then try to pick it up with your hands.
One big difference: on RGPs it’s obvious which way goes out. On soft lenses, the difference between normal and inverted is subtle. Also RGPs are usually color coded (you can’t see the tint), but if your soft prescription is different you’ll have to remember which is which.
I’ve been wearing soft disposable lenses since I was a teenager. I’ve been through several brands, but the latest optometrist gave me Avaira. The original hydrogels required a surface coating to keep them properly moist and oxygen-permeable, and the lenses got less comfortable as the coating wore off; Avaira is a new kind of silicone hydrogel which needs no coating. They clean up nicely with the usual rubbing technique, and as there’s no coating to dissolve they also stand up well to the bubbly overnight stuff. If you happen to wear a common size and strength, and don’t need toric lenses for astigmatism, they’re <$20 a box, and the technician can usually just sell you some straight off the shelf.
They feel a bit strange compared to the other hydrogels, though. The Acuvue lenses I wore in high school felt sort of rubbery. Avaira feels a little like the non-sticky side of Scotch tape. My eyeballs can’t tell, of course, but it was a little odd fishing them out of the blister pack the first time. If you’re switching from RGP lenses, this will also be your first time discovering the joys of having finally gotten the blasted thing to stick to your eyeball, as you peel your lids open at 6am, only to discover when you blink that it’s inside out. :smack:
thelurkinghorror, by lasting I mean being comfortable enough to wear. After enough wear, they’ll usually get a small tear or have an uneven surface, making it feel uncomfortable in my eye.
For the record, wearing them for significantly longer than recommended does not decrease their effectiveness. I went to my eye doctor one time after wearing the same pair for, oh, maybe five weeks. My eye doctor looked at my eyes (with the contacts in) through the microscope, and observed that the contacts lenses looked clean and healthy for use. I passed the eye exam with those contacts as well (as in, the eye doctor determined that the prescription I had been using for the last five years was still sufficient, and did not need to be strengthened).
I’m as yet too young to say what you should do in terms of getting lenses that simultaneously correct your vision and correct for age-related presbyopia.
What I will say is that weekly lenses – soft silicone hydrogel lenses labeled for weekly use – are so much easier to deal with than any other lenses. And they do have them with various varieties of correction for presbyopia. But you’ll have to find out if those corrections are acceptable to you.
If you’re wearing RGPs, you probably have the option to switch to wearing lenses you don’t have to deal with every day. It is so much nicer to only have to take them out and reinsert them weekly. Do whatever the heck you can to avoid having to deal with your lenses every day. That should be consigned to the dustbin of history.
Thanks for all the suggestions, folks; I appreciate it. My main issue is with comfort, though, not convenience. Daily contact maintenance is a hard-wired part of my life. But the constant irritation is starting to bug me. Maybe it’s because I live in such a windy, dusty location.
As for presbyopia, that’s not a problem at all. I use a “monovision” prescription right now (one eye optimized for near, one for far) which I assume can be done with any lens technology.
I started wearing soft hydrogel lenses in Phoenix, Arizona. The desert southwest is second only to Mars when it comes to dusty misery – the outdoor desert scenes in Return of the Jedi were actually filmed down near Yuma. I had less problem with grit when I had them in than when I had them out. They’re just as easy to clean as hard lenses, and if they really can’t be salvaged, you have the advantage of being able to just throw them away and go on to the next pair early.