Wearing Contact AND Glasses at the same time

[GrandPaClanger]

I have found with the latest trial lenses that the hospital have given me that although they give great mid to long distance they are rubbish for reading and computer work. A £3 pair of +2.5 reading glasses from Tesco sorts it out. I will mention this when I go next week to collect the lenses they have had made, Does anyone else have to wear glasses on top of their contact lenses.

Just wondering if as I am 47 the lens in my eye is less flexible and compounding the KC issue. Maybe without KC I would be in bifocals

Ian

[rosemary johnson]

Yes .
When I wear the new lens I got for the grafted eye, I need reading glasses for anything at less than arm's length.
That means, not just reading (on paper0 and computer use, but also sugh things as grooming a horse, or pulling up ragwort (a horse-poisoning weed).
Or cooking, washing up, etc.
I don't wear that lens muc - though that's not only the bizarreness of being so long0sighted with it, but because the eye doesn't tolerate t for more than a short tme.
I'm 49. Both my parents were were wearing bifocals b my age (IIRR!) and my sister is in varifocals so maybe it runs in familis.
Rosemary

[Andrew MacLean]

I first wore glasses over my contact lenses for reading when I was 35 and well pre-graft. I now wear that configuration all the time; lens in my left eye with some power on the lens of my glasses and just glasses for my left eye. I have separate glasses for reading.



Andrew

[Ladyburd]

Hi

I have had INTACS last year & have just been fitted with a hard lens (only in the left eye) , the staff at Gartnavel say my lens will be worn with my current glasses & should give me 20/20 vision.

However, I'm finding it a nightmare to use the hard lens as my eyes are so sensitive.

Does anyone know of "conformable" lenses that I could ask for?

Cheers

[Anne Klepacz]

Hi Ladybird and welcome to the forum!
There are special soft lenses for KC these days (eg Kerasoft or Soft K) though I'm not sure whether Gartnavel do them. There are also hybrid lenses (hard centre, soft skirt) and scleral or semiscleral lenses. And of course, there's piggy backing - wearing a soft lens underneath the hard one. So you could ask your optom whether any of those options might work better for you. Good luck
Anne

[Lynn White]

Ahem...

47? Arms not long enough to read with? Its called presbyopia and it doesn't bypass you just because you have KC!

So I am very sorry to say .... its called getting older

Lynn

[GrandPaClanger]

Thanks Lynn made my night LOL.

From Wikipedia

The word presbyopia comes from the Greek word presbys (πρέσβυς), meaning "old man" or "elder", and the Neolatin suffix -opia, meaning "sightedness"

[Lynn White]

Yep..... that's the one.....

However, on a more thoughtful note, the fit of your lenses may be accelerating exacerbating the situation. Sounds like you may be a bit over-powered? So good idea to check with the optom.

Lynn

[rosemary johnson]

Ahem...

47? Arms not long enough to read with? Its called presbyopia and it doesn't bypass you just because you have KC!

So I am very sorry to say .... its called getting older

Lynn

Lyn,n, Lynn! - you've actually seen that lens...
Actually, it's called getting fitted with a new lens 3 months post graft and the eye changing shape again by the time th elens arrived.
SO it was, by the time I got it, very over-powered - and, believe it or not, still is roughly the same amount overpowered despite the eye changing shape again when the stitch broke.
I probably do have presbyopia as well, bt that isn't the main problem - and a change of power by +1.5 would let me read OK and still give reasonable distance vision (compared with what I can see without/the previous lens.
Of course, that wouldn't solve the problem it goes whie and misty after about an hour....!
Rosemary

[Lia Williams]

Yes I too sometimes need reading glasses over my contact lenses.

Although with the lenses I’m wearing at the moment I only need them for small print or in poor light. My right lens is effectively under powered, as although I can manoeuvre it into a place for good distance vision, as soon as I blink the distance vision reduces (ghosting etc) but the intermediate vision is perfect – no ghosting on text on the computer screen.

I didn’t like the lens to begin with – I couldn’t get on with the two lenses focussing at different distances. I stopped wearing the lens until a couple of weeks before my next appointment and I found the more I wore the lens the more I found I liked it! It’s lovely to be able to see price tickets on items when out shopping, or read cooking instructions on packets of food without having to wonder where my reading glasses are.

Meanwhile I’ve tried three new sets of lenses as neither the right nor the left lens is fitting properly. The two pairs of corneo-sclerals that were ordered didn’t fit and the latest pair of corneal lens has a left lens seems to be too tight as it was difficult to remove. After a couple of weeks my wearing time had plummeted so I’m letting my eyes recover before I try the new right lens again.

What I’d like is a pair of multifocal contact lenses which only need the addition of reading glasses for fine print or poor light. However I doubt very much with KC that is likely to be an option. Looking around the office to see how people without KC manage with presbyopia there seems to be two solutions. One is reading glasses, computer glasses and distances glasses. The other is a pair of varifocal glasses – even if the top part is unpowered. So I think that when my contact lenses have been sorted for fit and distance vision I’ll invest in a pair of varifocal glasses to wear over my contact lenses.

Lia