Contact lens help

Beltaine

This time last year I was sick and tired of fumbling with my glasses when using the viewfinder on my camera so I thought I'd try and get contact lenses.

I have an astigmatism, so I have to have toric lenses.

I went through literally a dozen different brands/types of disposable torics. All of them, except one, moved around my eye so much that they were uncomfortable, felt like they were going to fall out, and some of them even cause double vision because they would slide far enough that I would be looking through the edges.

I don't remember all the ones I tried, the most popular ones for sure, but the only ones that FIT well were Frequency 55.

So we went with those. The problem was, they made my eyes feel dry all the time. I was carrying around eye drops and using them every 2 hours or so. So after a few months, I gave up on them.

So, I seem to be left with 2 options. Contacts that don't fit but don't dry my eyes out, or contacts that fit but make my eyes feel dry.

Are there any other options?

I'm heading back to the eye doctor for the yearly in a couple weeks, and would like to try again on the contacts, but I don't know if it's even feasible.

Kyougu

Lasik?

MagicToaster

If you meet the requirements to be a OrthoK candidate, it's a really cool, non invasive, reversible lasik alternative! Not all Optometrists are lisenced to do so, so it's a little expensive.

Beltaine

Yeah, I've got vision insurance, but I don't think anything fancy is covered and I'm too cheap to pay extra.

Guess I'll just worry about glasses since somehow an exam for contacts is different than glasses and it's been 2 years since I got new glasses. Trying to get contacts and failing will mean having to pay out of pocket for glasses.

Deadfall

I use Day and Nights, or Night and Days or something like that. You leave them in for 30 days straight and I love them. They're durable, because they have to last a month, but they breathe pretty well for me.

ceres

I use toric daily disposables in my left eye, and I'm drawing a blank on the brand, but I've never found them uncomfortable. They were weird when I first started wearing them, but I think that was more because I had a differently-weighted contact lens in each eye.

I'll check on the brand for you when I get home. I can't imagine you wouldn't have tried it though, if you've been through that many big names. Have you ever worn contacts previously? Some people's eyes just never get used to them.

BlochWave

You understand that you need an optometrist needs to get some measurements to properly fit contacts, right? I want to make sure you weren't just buying contacts online or something, which works but you need to know all those numbers for curvature and stuff. If you did, maybe try a different optometrist or ask him to measure again. Did you tell him none of the ones you were trying fit?

Assuming you know that, another thought:
Even when I change to a new pair of contacts it can sometimes take a little why for my eye to adjust, and during that time they can be a little funky. If you were just rapidly trying contacts, I don't think that was an effective way to judge.

And you're throwing around toric like it's making this more of a problem, hell these days I hardly know anyone without an astigmatism. I use Acuvue Oasys right now, I used to switch like damned near every year or two, and never really noticed much difference between the brands, except as described below.

I wouldn't recommend the Day and Nights (or vice versa, whichever it is). I wore those for a couple of years before, for some reason, I just got to the point where I couldn't, and I know two other people with similar experiences. Even a brand new pair would move around too much to be comfortable. Well, I guess I wouldn't say I don't recommend them, they worked fine for a while, just don't be shocked or alarmed if they stop.

njd

It took me a while to find contacts that fit well (in my case, Bausch & Lomb's PureVision Toric) but they dried my eyes out. Things got a lot better when I switched to a hydrogen peroxide based contact cleaner (Clear Care) so maybe you can try some other cleaning solutions or systems and see if that helps the dryness?

MushroomStick

I've noticed that after years of wearing glasses all day, my eyes just dry out really fast if I'm not wearing them. Maybe its not so much the contacts drying your eyes out as it is just not having glasses shielding them?