A couple of years ago, researchers created a big, deep contact lens that not only covers the your cornea, but the white (sclera) as well. Scleral contact lenses are a miraculous vision device for people like me with warped corneas (astigmatism, kerotoconus) because the lens rounds-out the cornea so you can see normally and not look at the world through the bottom of a Coke bottle.
Even better, the lenses are designed to overcome dry eyes like mine. They are deep enough to hold a pool of solution so the lens floats on your eye and even though they have a firm shape, they allow 2-4 times as much oxygen into your eye as soft contacts.
But this didn’t help me. My eyes are so dry that every time I blinked with the Scleral lenses in, my eyelids smeared the contacts with mucus, just like with regular contacts. (This is despite years with tear duct plugs, Restatis drops, heat packs and fish oil.)
[“Dry Eyes Deserve Attention,” NYT, July 2017]
Dr. Susan Gromacki, the lens specialist at Washington Eye Physicians and Surgeons, shrugged off my despair. Four months before I went to see her, the FDA had approved a polymer-based coating for the lenses, Hydra-PEG , which keeps the contacts feeling wet, she said.
We waited for the lenses to come back. The coating worked. Let me rephrase that. IT WORKS!!!!! As of a couple of days ago, I have 20/25 vision.
This morning I’m working on my computer with both eyes open, meaning one eye isn’t closed to see better. My eyes aren’t tired. They don’t itch from pollen. When 4 pm arrives, I won’t feel exhausted from eye fatigue. With cones like Mt. Fujis protruding from my corneas, glasses don’t help much and super dry eyes mean that I haven’t been able to wear contacts (which used to help) since my cataract surgeries six years ago.
Costly
Scleral lenses aren’t cheap and they aren’t covered by insurance, but as I told Dr. Gromacki, they are cheaper than hearing aids.
They also take much more time to fit. It took three months of infinitesimal adjustments; that required faith that there would be a solution. Dr. Gromacki always had faith and often, I didn’t. But she was right. Thankfully.