Contact Lenses Care

Adaptation Tips

New hard-lens wearers experience varying degrees of discomfort during the initial adaptation period, which usually takes longer than for soft lenses. Follow the wearing schedule specified by your contact lens specialist (a typical one is shown below). The first few days are the hardest, and you may need a pep talk now and then to keep you on the track. During the initiation period you may experience blurry vision because of the extra tears your eyes produce in response to the foreign- body sensation. Your eyes may turn a little pink and feel scratchy. So it’s a good idea to wear your lenses at home initially until your vision and appearance improve and you feel comfortable and confident enough to venture out into the real world. Establishing a good blinking habit is especially important at this stage. Read the rest of this entry »

Discomfort

Hard-lens wearers point out with a sense of irony that “they don’t call them ‘hard’ for nothing,” and suspect that the real reason their lenses are called hard has as much to do with the difficulty in getting used to them as with their physical rigidity. Initially a hard lens causes everyone some discomfort. (The amount varies, but at no time should you feel real pain. If you do feel sharp pain, either the contact lens has been improperly fitted or there’s something under it.)

Hard lenses feel uncomfortable at first because, although the edges are thin and perfectly smooth, they’re basically inflexible. Every time you blink, the edges of your eyelids bump against the edges of your lenses, making you very aware that the lenses are there. Ultra-thin lenses, with a central thickness of .035 mm, will flex unnoticeably a bit when you blink, and this is mostly beneficial to the tear-pumping action. Read the rest of this entry »