UK Keratoconus Self-Help and Support Association

There are lots of questions raised here, but as a long term scleral wearer, I'll try and cover some of my experiences. First, there is "getting used to them". There are two aspects to this - your sense of "feeling" the lenses and the actual comfort. If they don't settle down they can be refitted and there are lots of factors that can be changed, they are certainly not one size fits all. Then there is the visual part about the way the scleral lens works with your own cornea. When you have sclerals you can't do what you might have subconsciously done in the past - used your eyelids to flex you cornea, ultimately squinting! This is all more complicated than you might imagine - tear flow, oxygen getting to the cornea, and which saline you use. During the day the lenses do tend to get closer to the cornea so vision may change too. Many of us take our lenses out a couple of times (or more) during the day to refresh the saline.

I am surprised the number of new patients that are given little advice when they are first fitted. Moorfields are usually excellent on this - information leaflet, insertion and removal instruction/practice until you are happy, and the most important - the need to build up your wearing time slowly - like 2 hours in / 1 hour out for a couple of days then build up an hour or two extra a day. Hygiene is really important. The sclerals I think most of us use in the UK are designed to be stored dry. so you clean them and dry them when you take them out, put them in your storage case, then clean them before you put them in and fill with saline.

Sometimes things change and you need to go back a bit, get an "ordinary" cold and it can disrupt things.

Hiya. I can't remember specifically, but I know I was getting blood vessels growing behind the eye so I unfortunately had to give up on these. My optometrist did say I could pursue further by going to specialists at Moorfields, but in the end I didn't bother.