So a different topic for a change, instead of getting ortho K I have decided to quit using them after 4 years, I am currently 19 Male btw.
Ask me anything, maybe you’re someone still on the fence, I will try answer to the best of my abilities, my experience with them.
I’ve been using ortho k lenses since I was like 11 and I’m currently 24 so I’ve never really gotten used to wearing glasses. However I’ve been experiencing dry yes for a couple months now and have considered switching to glasses or day contacts. My prescription is a -6 in the left and a -5.75 in the right. I hate the thought of wearing glasses because they feel so annoying to me but idk what to do. Should I continue ortho k
I started Ortho-K 3 months ago and I went to my eye doctor today. I am on my 5th pair of lenses. My 5th pair is worse than my 4th pair. 20/25 vision in R eye and he just said L is “bad”.
I saw my doctor today and expected him to order a 6th pair but he said this may be as good as I get. We are going to go back to my 4th pair for a week and then consider trying one last time.
We review my images each time I go in, and on my 5th pair, the L eye impression is barely 30%, whereas the R eye is 70% or so. On the 4th pair, both eyes were closer to 70% L and 60% R of a complete circle impression.
I have never been told I have astigmatism but I did once find records many years ago that stated “very mild” in one eye but I don’t remember which.
My issue is that we have not reached even 3/4 of the way to the ideal perfect impression on my eyes, and my doctor is saying may be the best we can get. I don’t even have 20/20 vision in either eye yet. This has been a much longer process than I ever thought but I am surprised to hear him say this is acceptable.
I have a lot of starbursts at day and night, and can’t drive after dark. Though full disclosure I have not driven after dark in several eyes due to night blindness, but the ortho-K lens have tremendously helped that. Now I can’t see because of the giant starbursts. I also can’t see in low light, especially if I go from outside to inside.
I get that I may not get a perfect full impression, but even the doctor said most people get more than I have. He also says his patients usually go through 3-4 lenses before finding the best fit. He thinks we have over corrected and need to step back. That another pair might always go too far over where we need to be. But I would think since they are custom lenses we can tweak them better than this.
Two friends who have had them since childhood both say they’ve never needed this many corrections and that a mild astigmatism was easily corrected with these. One goes to the same doctor and she had her pair for 10 years and feels that her new ones aren’t as good as her old pair, and she thinks the manufacturer isn’t as good as before. Kinda like light bulbs where they make them not last.
Would love any advice or thoughts. Especially about my doctor kind of giving me the impression that this is “as good as it gets”….
I want these lenses to work so that I can get my freedom back to drive in the evenings and dark, which I haven’t been able to do for 8 long years! (And living alone makes life very difficult, especially in winter, to do basic tasks!).
Also, since many people are interested in prices, I paid $500 for the lenses and paid a set payment of $1300 for all the appointments involving the lenses. It was not billable to my vision insurance. Charleston, SC.
For some context, I’m 20 years old (-6.75 in the right eye and -5.50 in the left eye) and have been wearing Ortho-K since I was 7. All these years, I’ve never had a major problems with them, I could quite literally go hours wearing them at night and read on my phone or do homework. No dryness or pain. However, I got my lens renewed two years ago and since the first time wearing them, they suddenly get dry really fast. I could only go 10-20 minutes max before they started hurting and I sometimes woke up with them hurting due to dryness. The pain was mostly mild and didn’t happen way too often. I just started going to sleep right after putting them on, which is what you’re suppose to do anyway.
The problem is when I got my lens renewed again about four months ago. They hurt even more and after literal minutes of putting them in. I can’t go to the restroom or get a glass of water without them hurting anymore. I wake up literally every morning with my eyes hurting, and if I wake up in the middle of the night randomly, they hurt. It started affecting my sleep and I can’t keep them in for longer than maybe 6 hours. Eyedrops don’t help either, I usually use Refresh and Blink & Clean, they help for maybe 15 seconds and then it’s back to pain. If I use them more than 1-2 times, they don’t help with the pain at all. My optometrist told me to switch to gel eye drops because my eyes were too dry, but Systane made my eyes sting. I’m also not sure why the pain started exactly when I switched to my second most recent pair.
I told my optometrist all this and he told me he’d readjust the lens, which was about a month ago. Nothing changed and the pain was still daily, so he told me he would make a different set of Ortho-K lens with a new technique. I tried them today and they hurt even worse. I had to keep them in for 30 minutes today to take scans and they burned so badly after 15 minutes. I literally had tears dripping down my cheek during my eye scan. When the optometrist came in, the first thing he says is the lens worked great and my vision is already partly fixed just from 30 minutes. I thought you made a new pair of lens for me to fix the dryness/pain though?? He told me to keep wearing those pair and that he guarantees they’ll stop hurting after the first week because they’re stronger than my other pairs. My eyes hurt (not as bad as when wearing them, but some stinging) for another 20 minutes after taking out the Ortho-K lens.
Has anyone else experienced something similar or have any advice? I’m starting to think Ortho-K just doesn’t work for me anymore for whatever reason, but soft contacts dry out my eyes and glasses strain my eyes and my perception gets kind of wonky with them, which is why I used to prefer Ortho-K.
i’ve been on ortho K since I was about 10 and am now 19 (F). Have never really had any major issues and my eyes have responded really well to the lenses. Also note I have quite a tight pair of lenses (according to my ophthalmologist) for best results.
The other day I woke up with the worst migraine of my life- I had gone to bed with a slight headache and noticed my eyes hurt somewhat when I put the contacts in but attributed it to the headache. When I woke with the migraine, the pain seemed to be coming from the contacts(/my eyes?), which I quickly took out. The pain persisted in the right eye and right hemisphere of head, but ceased in the left eye immediately. I then proceeded to have standard migrainey symptoms for the next 48-72ish hours (fun!). I’ve just now put my contacts back in after skipping them for 2 nights, and noticed my headache started back up immediately. I’m going to wait at least a few more nights before I try again (frankly because I’m scared and don’t want to be bedridden for another 2 days), but I was just wondering if anyone else has experienced OrthoK related migraines? they may be totally unrelated but I otherwise have no idea what it could be. I’m also really bad at doing my monthly cleanses so… could be that potench. Sorry for the long post!
(also prescription info: roughly -2.25 in one eye and -2.50 in the other… very ballpark but one eye is .25 worse than the other)