RGP Lens hassles

[GraemeH]

Hello everyone...

Just thought I'd do a quick update on my lens experience. I got them a fortnight ago have managed to get the wear time up to 4 hours.

I haven't been able to wear them every day due to work & travel commitments, but even so I think I'm making some progress - they don't feel quite as uncomfortable as they did 2 weeks ago.

The problem is I just can't see that well with them! My vision wih specs is better and more stable than with the lenses, though sometimes when it all goes right it appears fine, until I try to read something, then it becomes apparent how poor it is.

Because of this I can't drive whilst wearing my lenses and it takes at least 1.5-2 hours for my eyes to regain vision good enough to drive with. As I've had to do a fair bit of driving lately, this has restricted how much wear time I can accumulate as with them in I can't really do much - the exact opposite of what was intended...!

Has anybody any similar experiences (e.g. will it settle down, wrong fit, wrong prescription etc), any ideas as to why the vision isn't great, or any suggestions for something I can do.

all replies gratefully received

cheers
Graeme

[GarethB]

Hi Graeme,

I am not too far from you, for me it took about three months to get satisfactory 8 hour wear which meant going to work with the lens in one eye and returning with a lens in the other. The time from getting my lenses and for work and the hospital to be happy for me to go back to work was about six weeks!

If time off work is what it takes to get acclimatised to wearing lenses, it might be worth getting signed off work for a short while. At the end of the day our health is more important.

Hope my experience helps you a little bit.

Gareth

[GraemeH]

Hi Gareth,

I get the impression for your posts that you are dependent on the lenses for good vision (hence the lens eye-swap thing to get to work and back).

The reverse appears to be true in my case, where my with-lens vision is worse than my with-specs vision!
Is this likely to improve or, as I am beginning to think, are the lenses not quite right, in which case I guess I should get back to the optom and try to get an earlier follow-up appointment to get everything checked over...

cheers
Graeme

[John Smith]

One of the first things I was told when I had KC was that I would certainly get better vision with lenses than specs. It's all to do with the lens smoothing out the optical surface of the cornea, whereas glasses can only try and refract, contacts smooth and refract.

So.. you will probably find a refitting may be required. Certainly, you should talk to your optician.

[Susan Mason]

Graeme,

had u got to the point where u needed to switch from glasses to contact lenses as u were no longer getting useful vision with your glasses? Or, did you move onto the contact lenses with the hope of attaining better visual acuity?

From personal experience, my move to rgp lenses ony happened once the glasses would no longer provide any useful vision. Its been quite a bumpy ride for me since and unfortunately for me, my eyes never tok to wearing the rgp lenses and so I was moved onto scleral lenses. These for me too, currently , have certain limitations altho I am aware others find them really good. After nearly 3 years now with no glasses and a contact lens with variable wearing time as my only means of sight, I now dont feel I remember what good vision was and quite often find myself checking with my husband to see if I can see road names etc....or even features and landmarks.

Hope all goes well for you and as suggested by many others previously, make yourself some basic notes so that when you next see your optom you can ask the questions you want to. For many appointments, I came out and half an hour later had remembered several more questions that i felt i should have asked.

Best Wishes,

Susan

[Carol Vines]

i was diagnosed when i was 14 and at that time i had never wore glasses and they were never an option to me at that point. i was fitted with hard lenses and i had to wear them for an hour a day and build up my wearing time.

i reached 4 hours quite easily but then found it took months to wear them for longer; i started wearing RGP lenses in my early 20's and over the last 15- 20 years have had many different lenses fitted, the fit makes all the difference in my experience, so as advised make notes of your problems and speak to your optom about your problems.

[paula hardman]

When I had my first pair, I was told that their was a certain amount of guess work involved in the getting the prescription right, especially so in our case where we don't have a glasees prescription that works properly to base the contacts on. THis means that it's likely you'll need a refit pretty soon after you've got the first pair, but the optician has to let you wear them in for a couple of weeks first.

[GarethB]

The RGP lenses re shape the eye to a certain extent which might explain why this morning when I went to put my right lens in that has the worst level of KC it appeared to have a mark round looking just like a lens was in! I knew this was not the case as I could see with my left eye so there had to be a lens there and the right lens ws in my hand!

Now when I take a lens out my sight is far worse than it would be first thing in the morning and I notice a watrey shimmer to everything. My optom told me this was due to the cornea going back to its normal shape.

So Graeme, after this ramble your eye may be still taking the shape of the lens and as the others have said, we do not always fit on a handy prediction chart for the right lens. I know for me, after a corneal topograph to determine the cornea shape the optom pulled out a big chart scribbled down some numbers and had to use a ruler to extrapolate what might be best for me. During the fitting session we tried a few lenses and the optom kindly squeezed me in between other appointments. At the end of my alloted time, I would sit in the waiting room letting the lens settle and when the optm had a moment he would check the fit. Once we were happy with the comfort and fit I sat in the waiting room until he had a moment to work on the final prescription. I was in hospital for about 8 hours of which about 1 hour was actually with the optom.

This may not happen in all cases, so you might need a refit, but as with all things it might just take time to adjust.

Keep is updated.

Regards

Gareth

[GraemeH]

Thanks again for all your replies.

I haven't yet reached the point where I need to ditch the specs in favour of lenses, though the optom made it clear that the specs have taken me as far as I can go with them. Any further advancement of the KC will push me down that route though.

I was becoming more aware of the deteriorating eyesight and thought the lenses would improve things. Indeed, the first pair of test lenses I tried gave me almost perfect vision. Unfortunately they were really painful to wear so they were a complete non starter.

I'm becoming more and more convinced that a refit is required and my next apppointment is over a month away with little or no prospect of hurrying this along (good old NHS - slow but I guess they get there in the end!).

This means I can carry on with the current lenses for 2-3 hours per day (if I don't need to see too clearly) to maintain the tolerance I've managed to build up, but can still do my job (and drive there and back!) using my specs. Thinking about it I realise I'm quite lucky to have this option, particularly in comparison with some contributors here who are lens dependent. As you can see I'm thinking positively right now!

cheers
Graeme

[Susan Mason]

That's the spirit Graeme !

You sound like you are doing the best you can.

In my opinion the contacts should not be painful however will feel wierd until you get used to them, it may just take a while for your eyes to get the hang of them or it could be a re fit, you will find out at your next appointment.

As you still have your glasses personally I would not over wear them just in case, the scarring I have now came after my first sets of lenses and whilst is not too bad is here for keeps now. Again no one seems sure if this is definately down to lenses or KC progression.

Good luck, Susan.