This blog post is something I’ve been wanting to write for a year now, and I’ve finally gotten down to writing down all facts and stories so I might be able to help someone out and to share my experience with the world. The audience for this post is obviously people who wear glasses and/or contacts on a regular basis or planning to start with contact lenses. It’s very important to not just trust whatever anyone tells you, no matter if they work with it daily as opticians – you need to get yourself acquainted with the field and get yourself some knowledge so that you can judge whether the options an optician suggest to you are good or bad for you and if you’re willing to try it out. That’s just some basic advice before I get started telling my story.

I’ve been using contact lenses since I was 15 years old, the year I started high school. It was such a freedom and it gave me ton of confidence I didn’t think I previously had. When you’re in your teens you’re usually also very self-conscious about what others think of you, and getting contacts made me feel good about myself. Long story short – I never had any issues with using monthly contacts ever since I started, until I tried out silicone-hydrogel contacts about a year ago.

It all started with the whole idea of being able to see night and day, and the thought of it sounded so cool when you have as bad eye sight as I do (minus 6).  I thought that it would also make it easier if I slept over at a friend’s place to not have to worry about not seeing. So I went to my optician and asked for them specifically because I got totally sold on the whole idea of not having to use glasses for a whole month!

She told me to use them first for 3-4 days in a row and sleep with them and then go back for another check-up so they can see the eyes. I never even got to the 3rd or 4th day. I tried sleeping with them one night and I woke up with eyes almost glued together because of either irritation or lack of oxygen. I tried blinking it away during the morning but it really didn’t work, so I took them out and cleaned them in solution and tried putting back in again – nothing worked – they were blurry as hell and I could not function with those crappy contacts.

I went back to the optician and got a check-up and apparently my eyes weren’t feeling so well after this try-out of silicone contacts, and we tried going back to monthly. So here’s the major issue – I could never go back to normal monthly contacts after that major failure of silicone contacts. It was as if every time I’d put them in, they’d just roll around in my eyes with every blink and I couldn’t focus on anything. Extremely annoying – and it didn’t get better!

I was recommended daily disposable contacts after that because that’s the least irritating to the eye and of course I had to rest my eyes by only wearing glasses for a while. This might be a solution to some people, and the story might just stop here, but if you’re living an active life and you want to be able to switch around from glasses to contacts in your free time – you should be able to. This solution with daily contacts might have worked fine but I found it to be a step back from before and also a very expensive option for me who used contacts almost every day normally.

Months went by and I only used daily contacts for a long time. Then I went back to try monthly contacts again after several months. This time it worked okay for a while, like a week or so. But I started getting dry eyes and itchy eyes very quickly after using them. This later on turned out to be some sort of bumps underneath my eyelids, which caused not only these symptoms – but also the same as what I got when I used the silicone ones. Glued eyes in the morning and really sore every day and it didn’t get better. So I got remitted to an eye doctor, who didn’t find anything. Then I went to another one, he could totally see the issue and he prescribed me some eye drops and it all got much better very fast.

What is important to think about when getting these kind of contacts tested out, is to always trust your eyes reaction – if they’re dry, itchy or anything abnormal – take them out! Right away! We usually tend to think that it will be fine and that it’s just something temporary, but your eyes are so important so you shouldn’t risk anything by waiting it all out – while it might get worse.

I wanted to tell my story about this because I’ve seen some people writing about it online, similar stories to mine, and if me and all the others can inform people about the risks and the symptoms then at least we have saved someone from the anxiety, irritation and pain it can cause. I don’t think silicone contacts can be good for anyone really, if it doesn’t give your eyes the sufficient oxygen. I believe it’s just meant as something to sell more, from the contacts companies, and they don’t tell the opticians enough about the risks so they can let the people who try them out know before we decide.

Fast forward to today. I have just recently done a laser surgery, two weeks ago- so I won’t have to deal with these things again. Will keep you posted regarding the healing progress as time goes on.

Peace and love ,
Kimmi