Correcting vision problems.

[japple]

I had surgery on 1/1/08 to repair a detached retina. It was the 2nd episode for the right eye. The doctor said my eye has healed very nicely, but now the myopia is so severe that it can't be corrected by wearing glasses. My right lens was already coke-bottle thick, and it has gotten much worse. A cataract is also developing on that eye, but he said cataract surgery is premature at this point, so I'm going to have to do something else in the meantime, and he recommends contact lenses. I wore hard lenses and gas permeable lenses for about 30 years, but about 15 years ago, I went back to glasses because of allergies and dry eyes. The eye doctor mentioned toric lenses. Does anyone have experience with these lenses?

[wovenpaint]

1. I wear contacts

and have for years-starting with the hard ones!! I'm very near-sighted as well and LOVE contacts. They've come a long way with lots more moisture content. I've been diagnosed with astigmatism and am getting a pair of toric lenses to try shortly. I recommend contacts very highly....if nothing else, I believe that they're worth another try, IMHO.
Good luck and hope that your eyes feel better! :hi:

[Flying Dream Blues]

2. I agree that contacts have come a long way, japple.

First of all, I'm so glad your retina is healing nicely. That can be devastating if it doesn't...
And yes, they've come a long way with contacts! I really hope you wear them easily, but if dry eyes are still a problem here are some things I did...

I had allergies and dry eyes to the point of having to quit wearing even the new and improved contacts. However, I found that a lot of my dry eye issues had to do with diet, and when I quit eating these things my dry eyes got better. For me it was wheat and anything with vinegar (fermentation/yeast), along with alcohol (yeast). So, just in case you want to give this a try...I also found some really great naturopathic eye drops that helped a lot.

One last thing I tried was a pair of soft goggles made for dry eyes...you sleep in them, and there's a little sponge you moisten, and basically they keep your eyes from drying out when you sleep...they were comfortable and worked really well.
Here's the website I found them on...they're called TranquilEyes...
http://store.nexternal.com/shared/StoreFront/default.asp?CS=tdec&StoreType=BtoC&Count1=421657741&Count2=338798165&ProductID=118&Target=products.asp

Good luck w/ your contacts...I know how important it is to see well!

[japple]

3. Thanks wovenpaint and TTLG for the feedback. I'll

probably go with the toric lenses for the interim. When I wore contacts before, I loved how they corrected my nearsightedness, but we'll have to see how they do with astigmatism. I can read fine without my glasses. Just can't see anything clearly 10 feet away. It ain't easy getting old.

[SheilaT]

4. I have been wearing contact lenses

for 45 years now. Good lord, that's a long time.

When I started there were only the hard ones. I switched to soft ones nearly thirty years ago, and have been with them ever since, aside from one year with gas permeables. I was told the g-p ones were as comfortable as soft lenses but with better vision correction. They were as uncomfortable as hard ones, and any difference in vision correction wasn't obvious to me.

I am EXTREMELY near-sighted. My glasses were coke-bottle thick, and I no longer have any glasses to wear because my prescription changes every year, and new glasses are at least $400.00 for me. I am at the reading glasses stage, which means that my glasses need to be bi-focals, and I have a complicated prescription that requires something called a slab-off, which means they need to glue (or whatever) two different types of glass together. I can't get the lineless bi-focals. And I can't really see through the glasses, or couldn't with the last pair I bothered to get, about ten years ago. I just am not willing to fork over hundreds of dollars for glasses I might wear twice, if at all during the time the prescription is good.

I have some astigmatism in my left eye, so that lens is toric. It is my understanding that "toric" simply means it corrects astigmatism, The lens is every bit as comfortable as the regular soft one in the other eye.

I have major hay-fever kinds of allergies, and aside from periodically using the eye drops to add some extra lubficant, I have no problems wearing lenses. I realize that true dry eyes are another thing altogether. It is my opinion that hard lenses are more apt to make your eyes dry. Please give toric soft lenses a try. If nothing else, they should be vastly cheaper than glasses.

[japple]

5. Thanks for the testimonial! From what I've read, there is

now a hybrid with soft edges and a hard center. I didn't have time to ask a lot of questions from the ophthalmolgist last time, but I'm getting a list of things to ask next time. I think he said I needed to wait until 3 mos. after the surgery date (which would be April 1st) to give the eye time to heal and reshape itself. And you're right about the dry eyes thing. I think mine are caused by allergies and using antihistimines. True dry eye syndrome is another thing altogether. Thanks again for the info.