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So I’m new and this is my story. My apologies for the length of this, but thanks in advance for reading. I would appreciate any help or advice if you can give it:
I am 34 years old, and suffer from what I've been told is about medium myopia (-5.50 contact prescription) and mild astigmatism. I was an exclusive contact lens wearer for about 20 years before problems with severe dry eye led to me switching back to glasses early last year. I really wore contacts all the time; there were periods in that span where I did not own a functional pair of eyeglasses. I believe now that my dry eye is the result of this contact lens use, maybe more appropriately termed as abuse for probably at least 12-15 of those 20 years. When I first started wearing contacts as a teenager, promotion of “extended wear” was a big thing, and I would sleep in my contacts for days, even weeks at a time before changing them. This continued through high school, college, and into my mid 20’s, into the early years of my marriage. (Yeah, I know. I just didn’t care). It’s hard for me to believe now as I look back, but I never really saw this as a big deal. If my eyes were sticky, I would just turn up a few drops from the multi-purpose solution in the morning and I was good to go. It was never painful; I remember consciously thinking that I did not have any of the same problems as other contact wearers I knew; I even wondered how I was so lucky. As I grew to be a bit more responsible in my old age, I read an article by chance and got scared about corneal neovascularization and finally cut this out and started sleeping without them every night maybe 5 or 6 years ago. But I was still wearing them during the day for maybe 15 hours or more, still with no issues. Fast forward to maybe 3 years ago, I started noticing these weird little pains in my head right above my eyes that would come and go. Sometimes it was dull, sometimes more like a shooting pain. I had no clue what was going on and wondered after some time if I might even have a brain tumor. The short of that story is that one optometrist, two ophthalmologists, and one MRI later, I was diagnosed with severe dry eye. It took a while to diagnose, because it did not present like typical dry eye and those sensations were not what I was telling the doctors. But that is clearly what it was after the last guy finally thought to do a Schirmer’s test on me. In one eye I had virtually no tear production at all over however many minutes the strips were left in. The other eye at least produced something, but it was still severely deficient.
This was, of course - perplexing to me at first because I never associated the pain I was having in my head as a “dry eye” type of pain. I did know from previous experience that it seemed my eyes were always very dry and painful whenever I didn’t have my contacts in, which I tried not to let happen very often. (I didn’t originally put much thought into this, if you couldn’t tell). So early last year to deal with the head pains I was having, I went back to wearing glasses full-time for the first time since I was in junior high school - figuring it would alleviate the dry eye or whatever you might call those other symptoms finally. Instead of this happening though, my dry eye over the past 2 years has become worse. Uh, much, much worse, and without my contacts in on a daily basis it has steadily and finally morphed into the classic, dry-as-a-bone scratchy painful dry eye symptoms.
So – for this forum - my dilemma now has become over the argument for glasses vs. contacts. I know now that my contacts likely feel somewhat better because they are acting sort of like a band-aid or shield, covering the eyes up and protecting them from some of the more typical symptoms, but at the same time I know they are perpetuating the dry eye problem by so many hours of wear. I am now at a point where I really don’t know what to do. Part of me wants to say screw it, chuck the glasses and go back to wearing contacts at least during the day since it feels so much better. But I also don’t want to make my long-term dry eye problems worse than they already are. It scares me to think the damage that may already be done to my eyes just in the past 15 years or so. And I plan on needing my eyes for some time to come…
When wearing glasses, I get into what seems to be the repetitive problem of eye drops, then more drops, more drops, and then by the end of the day I wind up in a place where my eyes are drier than ever, more painful than ever, and I have almost a low-grade headache due to all of it. There are times I’ve had to pop ibuprofen or something at the end of the day just to deal with that. I am beginning to suspect that I have problems with the oil / lipid layer of my tear film (Meibomian Gland Syndrome / Disease?) in addition to regular tear production, since I seem to get into that repetitive problem where most OTC drops just dry up quicker and quicker from the time I put them in. Sometimes they don’t last for even 10 minutes before I’m tipping the bottle again. I did try Restasis at the urging of the middle opthalmalogist I saw for about 6 months last year, but with no luck. My eyes burned twice a day when applying the drops, and then I would still wake up at 2 am or so most nights with them screaming in red, dry pain. I don’t have to tell anyone reading this forum here probably how annoying to downright painfully depressing this all can be. There are days when I can manage ok, and there are days where by 5 pm I realize I’m in a horrible mood and have been very unproductive all day long just because of my eyes. That’s no way to live life. I’m also starting to think it is affecting my relationship at times with my wife and our 2 small daughters.
Help please? I am so sick of this. All things considered, I would rather stick with my glasses from here on out because I’m worried anymore that wearing my contacts for more than just a few hours at a time may damage my eyes further in the long run. I’m a runner and I do generally wear my contacts for an hour or so several times a week when I’m out pounding the pavement; I don’t see a problem with this, but I really don’t want to go back to them full-time. Glasses so far however have proven to be a real challenge, since my eyes always want to dry-up like raisins in the sun under them. And if I’m being honest, I have spent a small fortune over the last two years on trying all kinds of different eye drops and products. Just today I got some more Systane Balance to see if the oil in that might make it last longer on my eyes. But so far after two applications about 4 hours apart, my eyes have a low-grade burning sensation and feel heavy and tired. Not as dry as they ever have I will admit, but they still felt pretty rotten due to the other issues.
Seriously, is anyone else going through this with glasses after having worn contacts for many years? I really expected that my dry eye would be helped out by not wearing contacts after only a couple of weeks or so. But that has been about the farthest thing from the truth so far.
Thanks for any help,
John in NC
PS:
• Yes, I do also stare at a computer screen for probably 10 hours a day. I work in IT and there is not much way around this.
• I also was prescribed Accutane acne medicine as a teenager. Shaking my head in this forum at more than a few posts lamenting how that drug ruined other people’s eyes. I don’t recall how long I used this for, but I know a lot of people feel that Accutane continued to work negatively on their eyes long after it did positively on their acne…
• I also take more than 1000 mg of Omega 3 per day in the form of fish oil pills on the advice of all of the eye professionals I have seen over the past two years. This has done wonders for my cholesterol, but not sure I can say the same for my eyes.
I am 34 years old, and suffer from what I've been told is about medium myopia (-5.50 contact prescription) and mild astigmatism. I was an exclusive contact lens wearer for about 20 years before problems with severe dry eye led to me switching back to glasses early last year. I really wore contacts all the time; there were periods in that span where I did not own a functional pair of eyeglasses. I believe now that my dry eye is the result of this contact lens use, maybe more appropriately termed as abuse for probably at least 12-15 of those 20 years. When I first started wearing contacts as a teenager, promotion of “extended wear” was a big thing, and I would sleep in my contacts for days, even weeks at a time before changing them. This continued through high school, college, and into my mid 20’s, into the early years of my marriage. (Yeah, I know. I just didn’t care). It’s hard for me to believe now as I look back, but I never really saw this as a big deal. If my eyes were sticky, I would just turn up a few drops from the multi-purpose solution in the morning and I was good to go. It was never painful; I remember consciously thinking that I did not have any of the same problems as other contact wearers I knew; I even wondered how I was so lucky. As I grew to be a bit more responsible in my old age, I read an article by chance and got scared about corneal neovascularization and finally cut this out and started sleeping without them every night maybe 5 or 6 years ago. But I was still wearing them during the day for maybe 15 hours or more, still with no issues. Fast forward to maybe 3 years ago, I started noticing these weird little pains in my head right above my eyes that would come and go. Sometimes it was dull, sometimes more like a shooting pain. I had no clue what was going on and wondered after some time if I might even have a brain tumor. The short of that story is that one optometrist, two ophthalmologists, and one MRI later, I was diagnosed with severe dry eye. It took a while to diagnose, because it did not present like typical dry eye and those sensations were not what I was telling the doctors. But that is clearly what it was after the last guy finally thought to do a Schirmer’s test on me. In one eye I had virtually no tear production at all over however many minutes the strips were left in. The other eye at least produced something, but it was still severely deficient.
This was, of course - perplexing to me at first because I never associated the pain I was having in my head as a “dry eye” type of pain. I did know from previous experience that it seemed my eyes were always very dry and painful whenever I didn’t have my contacts in, which I tried not to let happen very often. (I didn’t originally put much thought into this, if you couldn’t tell). So early last year to deal with the head pains I was having, I went back to wearing glasses full-time for the first time since I was in junior high school - figuring it would alleviate the dry eye or whatever you might call those other symptoms finally. Instead of this happening though, my dry eye over the past 2 years has become worse. Uh, much, much worse, and without my contacts in on a daily basis it has steadily and finally morphed into the classic, dry-as-a-bone scratchy painful dry eye symptoms.
So – for this forum - my dilemma now has become over the argument for glasses vs. contacts. I know now that my contacts likely feel somewhat better because they are acting sort of like a band-aid or shield, covering the eyes up and protecting them from some of the more typical symptoms, but at the same time I know they are perpetuating the dry eye problem by so many hours of wear. I am now at a point where I really don’t know what to do. Part of me wants to say screw it, chuck the glasses and go back to wearing contacts at least during the day since it feels so much better. But I also don’t want to make my long-term dry eye problems worse than they already are. It scares me to think the damage that may already be done to my eyes just in the past 15 years or so. And I plan on needing my eyes for some time to come…
When wearing glasses, I get into what seems to be the repetitive problem of eye drops, then more drops, more drops, and then by the end of the day I wind up in a place where my eyes are drier than ever, more painful than ever, and I have almost a low-grade headache due to all of it. There are times I’ve had to pop ibuprofen or something at the end of the day just to deal with that. I am beginning to suspect that I have problems with the oil / lipid layer of my tear film (Meibomian Gland Syndrome / Disease?) in addition to regular tear production, since I seem to get into that repetitive problem where most OTC drops just dry up quicker and quicker from the time I put them in. Sometimes they don’t last for even 10 minutes before I’m tipping the bottle again. I did try Restasis at the urging of the middle opthalmalogist I saw for about 6 months last year, but with no luck. My eyes burned twice a day when applying the drops, and then I would still wake up at 2 am or so most nights with them screaming in red, dry pain. I don’t have to tell anyone reading this forum here probably how annoying to downright painfully depressing this all can be. There are days when I can manage ok, and there are days where by 5 pm I realize I’m in a horrible mood and have been very unproductive all day long just because of my eyes. That’s no way to live life. I’m also starting to think it is affecting my relationship at times with my wife and our 2 small daughters.
Help please? I am so sick of this. All things considered, I would rather stick with my glasses from here on out because I’m worried anymore that wearing my contacts for more than just a few hours at a time may damage my eyes further in the long run. I’m a runner and I do generally wear my contacts for an hour or so several times a week when I’m out pounding the pavement; I don’t see a problem with this, but I really don’t want to go back to them full-time. Glasses so far however have proven to be a real challenge, since my eyes always want to dry-up like raisins in the sun under them. And if I’m being honest, I have spent a small fortune over the last two years on trying all kinds of different eye drops and products. Just today I got some more Systane Balance to see if the oil in that might make it last longer on my eyes. But so far after two applications about 4 hours apart, my eyes have a low-grade burning sensation and feel heavy and tired. Not as dry as they ever have I will admit, but they still felt pretty rotten due to the other issues.
Seriously, is anyone else going through this with glasses after having worn contacts for many years? I really expected that my dry eye would be helped out by not wearing contacts after only a couple of weeks or so. But that has been about the farthest thing from the truth so far.
Thanks for any help,
John in NC
PS:
• Yes, I do also stare at a computer screen for probably 10 hours a day. I work in IT and there is not much way around this.
• I also was prescribed Accutane acne medicine as a teenager. Shaking my head in this forum at more than a few posts lamenting how that drug ruined other people’s eyes. I don’t recall how long I used this for, but I know a lot of people feel that Accutane continued to work negatively on their eyes long after it did positively on their acne…
• I also take more than 1000 mg of Omega 3 per day in the form of fish oil pills on the advice of all of the eye professionals I have seen over the past two years. This has done wonders for my cholesterol, but not sure I can say the same for my eyes.
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