Another RGP question

This is more of a curiosity than a problem. I wear Focus Daily soft
lenses over the RGP lenses. Because of a poor TBUT I can only
tolerate hard lenses for an hour or two. With the soft lenses over
the hard, I can tolerate the lenses for 8 hours or more.

Last night I showered without removing the contacts. I was careful to
keep my eyes closed while in the shower. later in the evening I
noticed the lenses were irritating my eyes. I guessed I'd gotten
water in my eyes during the shower. At bedtime I attempted to remove
the contacts. First the soft lenses since they are on top, then the
hard lenses. However I found that the soft lenses were BENEATH the
hard lenses. This happened once before. I had showered while wearing
the piggyback lenses. When I removed the lenses at bedtime I
couldn't find the soft lenses. I assumed they had fallen out in the
shower. But the next morning my eyes were quite irritated and my wife
noticed the soft lenses were still in my eyes.

So how the hell do the soft lenses get under the hard lenses? I
assume while washing my eyelids in the shower I'm squishing the soft
lenses off to the side of the hard lenses and then they move back into
position but beneath the hard lenses.

 

I've never seen/heard of anyone wearing a soft lens ON top of a gas perm lens-
only a standard piggybacking system of a gas perm OVER a soft lens.
A rigid lens needs some movement to "flush" the tears between the cornea
and the lens and I don't know this would be possible with the soft lens
essentially "pinning" the gas perm to the cornea. I just think that the
lens combination that you're describing would lead to a corneal hypoxic
situation (ie lack of oxygen -edema). I don't know how possibly a soft
lens on top of a gas perm could possibly improve the comfort.

None -of- the- less, obviously the only way the situation could have happened as
you described it would be that both lenses were displaced off the cornea and
the soft lens recentered itself first. Usually a gas perm that's displaced off the
cornea has to be manually recentered with a finger but a soft lens sometimes
will recenter itself w.o. any help.

frank

 

(drfrank21) wrote in message

I've tried the typical piggyback but there's too much edge sensation.
It works no better than RGPs alone. The "reverse piggyback" works for
me. The soft lenses adhere to the eye very well. The RGPs don't stay
in place on my flattened, irregular corneas. I imagine it doesn't
take much for the RGPs to slide out from under the soft lenses. I was
prescribed Restasis over a year ago but it took a year for the
insurance company to decide my poor TBUT is the result of LASIK and
refuse to cover it. So now I'll spent the $100 to try it, hoping it
will improve my TBUT making the RGP lenses tolerable without
piggybacking.

Have I mentioned how much I wish I'd never had LASIK?