The gentle art of Fucking Contacts

[jennaria]

So I've worn glasses since I was a wee Thia-let in elementary school, which was long enough ago that contacts were a strange arcane thing that cost ridiculous amounts of money, could easily be lost, and were only if you had a Specific Sort of Eye Thing (according to my hazy childish memory). Times change, contact technologies update, and I decided that I wanted to cosplay Crowley from Good Omens, complete with yellow eyes. (Cat eyes, unfortunately, as yellow snake eye contacts are hard to come by. :-( )

So when I went to the eye doctor, I asked for a prescription for contacts.

So far, my attempts at wearing (regular! not even the cosplay!) contacts have gone as follows:

* At the eye doctor: perfectly smoothly! No problems whatsoever! Getting them out slightly more problematic, but whatever.

* First attempt on my own, a month or so later: right contact goes in smoothly, left does not. When I finally go to take them out, left one comes out fine, but the right one does not. Cue much poking at my eye. Got home only to discover that the reason I couldn't get it out of my eye is because it did not go in smoothly - in fact, it didn't go in at all, but was sitting on my bathroom counter drying out.

* Second attempt on my own, today: neither one wanted to go in. To the point where I had to stop twice and just breathe for a bit, before trying again. Got them both in! Eventually! So far so good?

EDIT Also they came out relatively easily. Sorta. Still required Wife's assistance to point out that even regular contacts are, in fact, visible in your eye, and it's easier to take them out if you're looking in the mirror rather than trying to do it blind. And I had to pause and breathe in between. END EDIT

...anyway, I'm going to need to wear them regularly for the next month, or else my Crowley cosplay is going to be preceded by a lot of unnecessary anxiety as I try to get the damn contacts in. :wince: Which may still be true, but at least I'll be in practice. Hopefully.

Comments

[keshwyn]

Oh yes. I remember that. It took me an HOUR AND A HALF to get one in the first time. Bah. Sympathies.

[swingandswirl]

Oh man, sympathies! I swore off contacts after one got stuck in my eye and attempts to remove it by an incompetent doc on duty vs the opthalmologist i'd been going to for 15 years at that point resulted in abrasion of the uppermost layer of my eye - it all turned out fine, don't worry!

But if I remember correctly, the only way to make the whole process less annoying is practise and LOTS of eye drops.

[jennaria]

I feel like it would be less frustrating if they hadn't gone in so easily the first time! ...which is not totally reasonable, because first time I had the assistance of someone who handles contact lenses literally every day for multiple people (not the optometrist himself, but one of the clerks that help out), and every time after then has been just me and Wife. But still.

[jennaria]

That sounds depressingly like it's right. (And honestly, trying to remove the contact lens that wasn't there - I did Not Nice things to my eye myself, and Wife wound up pouring in eye drops because it was looking ominously red. Fortunately, no harm done.)

[keshwyn]

Do you want suggestions?

[jennaria]

If you have suggestions beyond 'keep practicing,' then I am all for them.

[keshwyn]

Wash your fingers before you put in, pick up the contact, then transfer from finger to finger, drying fingers as you go, until the contact between finger and contact is no longer wet. Moisture makes them stick, in my experience.

Once the contact between finger and lens is dry, transfer to your pointer finger and then put a single drop of saline solution in the center of the contact lens to make that wet (and ergo, sticky) and also to lessen the chance of catching an air bubble beneath the lens. Air bubbles practically guarantee you will blink the lens out.

If the lens skews sideways and the edge touches your finger (the bowl tips over, as it were) make sure to reset the lens before you try again. It needs to be a round little suction cup for it to achieve stasis on your eye.

Once the contact is on your eye, lower your upper eyelid slowly with your finger controlling to squeegee any air bubbles (and the saline) out from under the lens.

When I'm no longer traveling, I'll see if I can get mindways to take a video if me putting mine in, to illustrate what I'm doing.