Glasses or Contacts?

I have Deni Bonet to thank for my inspiration for this entry.

So many of her readers have really lousy vision, including me, that I thought it might be interesting to post about it. Especially since I got a card in the mail from my eye doctor yesterday, reminding me to make an appointment. My very first pair of eyeglasses, when I was six years old, looked very much like the cat-eye ones you see here, except that the frames were brown. I wore glasses, and got my Rx changed several times until I was a senior in HS, then got contacts. Conventional hard lenses were the thing for me in the 1970s! No soft lens could correct my astigmatism.

Those "conventional hard" babies aren't even on the market anymore, and have been replaced by "rigid gas-permeable" (RGP) lenses. They look the same, and correct my vision just as well, but if I happen to fall asleep with them in, I don't wake up feeling like someone's seared my eyes with a branding iron. They may sting a bit, but that's it. I still have a spare pair of those old-fashioned conventional hard lenses to be used in emergency situations--but only in an emergency--they last forever. The shelf life of your average RGP lenses is about 5 years. So, at $50 a lens, it costs me $20 a year for them. Contrast that to the cost of glasses.

There must be something about what I do for a living, but everybody I've ever worked with or hired had glasses or contacts. The glasses people find popping something into their eye too icky. Those of us who wear contacts found our glasses to be too heavy, foggy, etc. I'm the only one who wears hard lenses, so those who wear soft lenses are fascinated when I get some sort of dust wedged under a lens, and have to pop it out for a quick cleaning, before I pop it back in.

"Can you show me that? I've never seen a hard contact lens before. How you put it in and get it out?"

"Sure. See. To pop it in, you just ease it up to your cornea until it sticks there. To pop it out, you have to stretch the outer edge of your eyelid a bit, but then you just blink. My aunt taught me that even before I got contacts."

I've never been able to wear soft contacts. Can anyone explain how they work getting them in and out? They look fuckin' huge to me!

For the clinically inclined, below is an explanation of RGP contacts:

Rigid gas-permeable contact lenses for astigmatism

For corneas with low toricity, spherical, rigid gas-permeable (RGP) lenses can often mask the astigmatism. If the spherical RGP lens fits well on the cornea but astigmatism persists, an anterior toric RGP lens is appropriate because it has a spherical base curve with a toric front surface to correct the astigmatism. Prism is often added to the lens to maintain orientation of the lens.

For corneas with large amounts of toricity not correctable with spherical RGP lenses, back toric RGP lenses are used. The back of the lens has 2 curves, 90° apart, to saddle the toric cornea. The front of the RGP lens has a spherical central zone. Back toric RGP lenses can also be used on irregular corneas, such as those observed in Terrien marginal degeneration or pellucid marginal degeneration, to improve centration of the RGP lens.

When residual astigmatism persists over a back toric RGP lens, a bitoric RGP lens can be used. The back surface of this lens is similar to that of a back toric RGP lens, and it has 2 curves to stabilize the RGP lens on the toric cornea. This lens also has 2 curves on the front to correct for the residual astigmatism.

The Mandell-Moore bitoric fitting guide can be used to determine the appropriate base curves and CL powers. It relies on accurate and refined refractions and keratometric readings. Trial fittings in the office with diagnostic RGP lenses often result in the most accurate orders for RGP lenses.