KC soft contacts success :D (impossible is nothing !!)

[Lynn White]

Rich,

Yes, KeraSoft is fitted privately but its very hard to give you quotes as to the High Street as they vary so much depending on location and other factors. If you email me at the address in my signature giving me your address, I can advise you as to the practices who fit KeraSoft3 near your location and you can ring them up and get quotes.

As to trials, this should be possible but again, you will be able to discuss this when you ring them up. You will get a faster turnaround privately but it will be more expensive than the hospital unless you find a private practitioner who is also a hospital contractor. (Some smaller hospitals contract out because they don't have their own contact lens clinics).

[rosemary johnson]

Hi Rich and KiaZ,
Has anyone suggested trying sclerals, especially for sport?
They are 24mm diameter (yes, I know the thought of putting that sized lens in is rather a shock!) which means they don't fall out or get flicked out when you're speeding down a mountain or taking a swing at a ball.
They fit on the outer, white, part of the eye and fit clear over the central area, so can be more comfortable than the smaller, corneal, lenses.
SOme of us get on fine with them. Most of us have a fit when we first see them.
As for light and shadow, i have that problem with, eg. trees casting dappled shadows. There was one occasion when I was riding a horse out on a trail and the group of us were cantering up a track up the hillside. We got to a part where the path was getting steeper, and started to go through woods.
Sunny day, dappled shadows, could see very little through the stripes of light and shade.
Path getting steeper and my horse was going faster and faster. I ended up perched there, holding his mane thinking "Hope you know where we're going, my son, cos I can't see the way!"
Rosemary

[Lynn White]

Rosemary...

Just to say, sclerals are actually very expensive if you are outside the UK NHS system. They are subsidised here in the UK but abroad they are not. I was recently talking to a woman with KC in the US and she had been quoted $8000 US for them - which is really about right here as well privately. They are also very intensive from a chair time point of view and you have to have professionals that are versed with them and prepared to spend the time doing adjustments. Not a problem really here in the UK with our NHS system but definitely more problematic abroad.

Sophie Taylor West posted here recently about SoClears which are a soft lens size type of "semi scleral" manufactured in the US which I am looking at as well. They are a cheaper option but again do need a fair amount of chair time to get right. As far as I can tell, these give about the same results visually as sclerals and are more comfortable than RGPs but less so than softs.

[rosemary johnson]

Lynn,
Sclerals costly outside NHS? - yeah, tell me about it!!!!
It's one of the things I've had to think about recently - if I walked out of A Certain Hospital Which Shall Be Nameless after disastrous op, could I afford to get the sclerals privately if any new hospital I could get moved to didn't have a sclerals system?
Fortunately not an immediate problem as it's going now, but has been a concern.
Chair time, I'm well aware of - been wearing the things for approx 32 years.
And if the optoms of this world think time in THEIR chairs is an issue, well, we the wearers also know a lot about the time we spend sitting in chairs in the waiting rooms, fnar fnar!
Still a practical solution for many sporting type activities, though, if it can be arranged.
No?
Rosemary

[Lynn White]

Hehe Rosemary...

There is chair time and there is chair time! Yes, patients have to wait for ages - thus it is ever so! Unfortunately, professionals have to measure their fees against time spent and balance with that dratted word "profitability". This is why many optoms do not even "go there " re sclerals. Yes they are definitely an option - but they do take time and money. I was only answering Riaz from the point of view that he was not happy with K3 taking a month (in Italy). Sclerals would take much longer as they have to be made and adjusted.. well you know the drill!