On Monday, I finally had my contact lens fitting and took my shiny new lenses home. Yesterday I had to wear them for three hours and then increase the wear time in one hour increments daily until I’m at the maximum twelve hours. Well this is easier said than done, I’m struggling with them quite a bit.

For starters, I have astigmatism in my right eye. It’s not severe, but enough to warrant the use of a toric lens and this is making insertion a little more awkward. I can usually get the left lens in pretty quickly, but the right is only successful after a good 15 minutes of fiddling about. Removal isn’t exactly a fun affair either - funny how the blasted things won’t get off your finger when you’re trying to put them in, but when you want to get them out they hang onto your eyeball for dear life.

I have dry eyes apparently, so I have to pay extra for premium comfort lenses. Despite this, my eyes still feel sore and dry, even only shortly after I’ve put the lenses in. I’m also getting some headaches too, right above the eye socket. 

Then there’s the vision itself, which isn’t great. Once the toric lens has settled itself in (which can be up to half an hour after insertion) I still can’t see very clearly. Using the computer is particularly difficult as text looks slightly blurry and I can really feel my eyes straining. As I spend a great deal of time looking at my screen, this is worrying.

Finally there’s the hassle. Daily disposables are expensive, so I’m using monthlies and all the cleaning just adds more work to my day. I admit I’m terribly lazy, so anything like this is just too much effort. I like the simplicity of popping my glasses on in the morning and then throwing them on the bedside table at night. 

So, I guess I’m not really convinced that contacts are the way to go right now. I’ll give my trial a little bit longer and see if things improve, but otherwise I don’t think I’ll be making the switch.

In other eyesight news, I had my new glasses replaced just over a week ago. Apparently the frames were too wide for my face (causing the distortion) and the lenses were too thick. I now have a smaller pair of frames with thin lenses which I’m extremely comfortable wearing.

Today I picked up my shiny new glasses. I’ve been wearing them for about 2 hours and I’m having a little difficulty adjusting to the new prescription. I’m getting this weird bendy distortion at the sides, particularly on the left lens. Googling the problem reveals that either a) it’s normal and my eyes will adjust or b) my prescription has been made up wrong and I need to go back and get it fixed. I’m worried about it being the latter as the effect can be associated with wrongly corrected astigmatism - which I do have, but in the other eye.

Of course, it doesn’t help that I only got about four hours sleep last night. For some annoying reason, whenever I have to get up early I never manage to sleep well. Maybe that’s why it’s not going too well for me. I have to nip into town tomorrow anyway, so if things aren’t better in the morning, I’ll pop into the opticians and get them to double-check the lenses.

I also have a contact lens appointment on Friday, so I do hope the prescription itself isn’t wrong.

UPDATE Sept 9th: I visited the optician for a check over and he confirmed that there was nothing wrong with my glasses. He did bend them to match the shape of my old ones better and the side distortion has been greatly reduced. However, it’s not perfect and my peripheral vision is still a bit skewiff, in particular I’m having difficulty typing and looking at my screen. I’ll need to discuss it at my contact lens appointment if things don’t improve.