New Scleral Lens Wearer UK - my experience 5 days on

[nors]

Hello everyone,

I have dry eyes due to sjogrens. About 6 years ago I had plugs, after which my lower ducts were cauterised. Since then the dryness has got worse and since last year I have felt I can't manage with drops gels and ointments.

Thanks to this great forum I discovered scleral lens and started my journey to obtain a pair. Well a year later I have them, from Moorfields, where I was saw Ken Pullum.

I have been wearing them for 5 days now and thought I would share my experience so far. Firstly I was surprised at their size. Although I had seen them on the web, in real life the size and hardness of them took me by surprise.

They are tricky to insert, although I am getting better. When I had them in for the first time I could really feel the edges of the lens in my eyes. I would describe the feeling as a soft cushion with rough edges. But now I don't notice the edges so much.

I am having problems with bubbles so will probably need the sclerals to be adjusted when I go for my follow up next week. I am also getting a lot of mucus build whilst wearing them. My lenses also get smeared on the outside, it seems to be at the highest point of the lens kind of where my eyelids meet when they blink.

When the bubbles and mucus build up gets to much I am having to take the lenses aout and clean then reinsert. I'm having to do this on average 3 times a day which is very time consuming and inconvenient especially when out of the house.

I am cleaning the smearing on the outside with a cotton bud which I have wet with saline. This is not so bad as I don't have to take the lens out, but it looks odd. If this doesn't work then again I have to take out clean and reinsert.

In terms of dryness, when the lenses are in I don't feel the dryness until it gets to around 7pm which is the time when my eyes begin to dry out the most. By about 8pm I am having to take the lenses out because they begin to feel very tight (by this time normally my eyelids don't want to stay open).

Overall I am finding the sclerals hard work but I don't want to give up. My ideal would be if I could out them in the morning and be able to forget I have dry eyes until I take them out in the evening. But even if I don't achieve this I hope by having them in for a few hours a day will improve the health of my cornea and prevent or slow down any long term/permanent damage lack of tears can cause to the eye. I'm quite worried about this as I had 3 episodes of corneal ulcers this year.

Anyway I hope the information I've given helps someone, like I have been helped.

[Reggie]

I have been wearing PROSE since 06 and I do not think the bubbles are due to the fit of the lens. What I have learned to do from Dr. Rosenthal is to drop the saline in the lens (not too fast either) until it is slightly overflowing, then I keep rotating the lens with my fingertips until all the bubbles are gone before I try inserting them. If you insert them with bubbles still in the lens, you are gonna have a bubble over your eye. I then check for bubbles with a little flashlight while I am constantly blinking. Hope this helps.

[nors]

Thanks for this tip. I make sure the lens is overfilled but do fill it quite fast. Will try slower filling and the rotating. How many hours are you able to wear your lens for without taking it out?

[Reggie]

I can wear the lenses from morning till late at night. During the summer months because of allergies, I have to remove them and clean out the mucous in the afternoon because of allergies. I never had issues with tolerating them although I know others did. I believe the doctors told them to gradually increase their wear time to build up their tolerance.