RGS's Wearing time

[Tom Gardner]

I was just wondering how long the people who wear RGP's wear them each day. Due to school commitments and not being able to cope with out them-I put them in @ about 7.30am and take them out @ about 9.30-10pm. What about everyone else?
Tom

[jayuk]

Hello Mate

I used to wear my RGP for about 16 hours a day when my KC was mild to moderate. However even to this date with a Scleral lens I can get 15 hours........so its an individual thing......but on the flip side I know there are ppl who cant tolerate them for even 2 hours...........really down to your lens tolerance.......but yes I hear what you are saying when you mentioned you cant function without them.

[GarethB]

Tom,

When I was your age, I used to do the same, now I am older I choose to keep to about 8 hours max which is wahat the optom recomended to me. He said that way I would have far more good days than bad and he is dead right. If I go 12 hours a day then the weekend is best seen as a blur as within a couple of weeks I start to get more bad eye days than good.

We are in a compromised position as we need lenses to see, but the standard Rose K style RGP's put pressure on the cornea and rub. This can lead to a sensitive cornea reducing wear time (hence a bad eye day). In extreme cases this can lead to corneal scaring but how common this is, is unknown to me.

To get the required wear time I have had to adapt to my sight changing from one eye to the other so giving me a maximum of 16 hours per day with out over doing the wear time for each eye.

This was the suggestion from my optom and also given when I asked about wear time too when I was new to the board.

This startegy might be worth trying to adapt to, but I fully understand if that will upset study so you might want to give it a go once the exams are over and you can relax a bit.

Hope this helps and good luck with the studies.

Gareth

[Susan Mason]

Hello Tom

I was not aware I had KC until I was 32 although I had worn glasses and soft contacts since learning to drive at 17.
Initially for the first two years I managed with my glasses and a really funny prescription. Then came the time I needed to move to lenses as the glasses no longer helped at all, it all went down hill rather quickly with me very possibly due to pregnancy. Having worn soft lenses I did wonder how I would cope as my eye had always been very sensitive.
The RGP turned out to be a no no for me and the most I could manage and the hospital would allow was 4 hours in one eye only the other eye was no lens at all. After 12 months trying different fits they moved me to scleral lenses and the comfort was good and I was pleased, seeing a little is so good when you have been used to seeing everything blurry for so long.
The wearing time was originally about 11 hours a day however, after 6 months or so this dropped down a little and also was not 7 days a week.
Currently I have been having a bad patch and wearing time is down to 5 or maybe 6 hours 4 or 5 days a week.
You will find that you will develop ways to cope, I too quite often wear one lens at a time as this gives me longer over the day than if I wear both at the same time. If this sounds strange you will find that when you have worn one lens for an hours or so your brain gets used to seeing clearly through one eye and it is so much better than everything being a blur. Obviously study time and exams may not be the best time to test this, but you could give it a try as Gareth says when things quieten down a little for you.

What I found was if I fell into the trap of whilst wearing the lenses during the day thinking, yes they feel ok lets watch some more TV or go out etc when I had already worn the lenses for quite some time, I would then suffer several days later when it caught up with me and then I would not be able to wear the lens at all. A bit like having a lot of late night parties I suppose, sooner or later the lack of sleep catches up with us all!

Good luck with juggling the wearing time.