I posted about my Bad Scleral Lens Day on our scleral lens Facebook group recently, and the way it seemed to resonate with readers motivated me to share it with the rest of you.
Even when you've been wearing scleral lenses for a long time, Bad Days happen. They can happen to anyone. They can happen in unexpected ways and for unexpected reasons. But because it's our eyes, and because it may involve lenses that cost thousands of dollars... it's easy to be really thrown off by having something go wrong.
I've been wearing scleral lenses, including PROSE and EyePrintPro, for more than twelve years now. But yesterday's experience reminded me that it's still sometimes an adventure.
I "never" get bubbles. But what did I get yesterday? Persistent huge bubbles.
I never saw them myself. I had a headache and some sinus pain, and my daughter looked at my face and noticed I had a huge bubble under my lens. I'm so thankful she saw it. It was too late the avoid the effects, and I still had to get home and get it out... after which I had 12 hours of unhappy eye syndrome... but it was better than it would have been if I hadn't realized till later.
My first step after getting the lens out was to get it back in again so I could get my eye comfortable. It was then that I had my second surprise. I found that, looking in my bathroom mirror, I had no idea whether there was a bubble. I think I've so used to believing I never have them, that I never discovered that I couldn't see them after moving into our present home. So this means revisiting my bathroom lighting and buying myself a decent magnifying mirror, and meantime, getting my daughter to look at my eyes before I go anywhere. (She took pictures, and I can see the bubbles in the pictures if I zoom in.)
My bigger problem Saturday though was the "my lens is squeezing the heck out of my eyeball" sensation which occasionally happens to me. This will sometimes trigger pain and numbness all across the left side of my head. I suppose that pain is probably why I never noticed the effects of a bubble in my lens, because normally I would think of that as painful. Anyway, the head pain, as best I can tell, happens when I have a sinus infection coming on on the left side, but it always takes me way too long to figure that out when it happens. On lens removal, I get a big red ring and soreness for awhile. No, this is not a tight fitting lens, it fits perfectly... on a normal day.
This too shall pass.
Scleral lens stuff happens.
A lens just won't go in no matter what we do.
A lens won't want to come out. (Careful, don't just keep pulling!)
A lens gets a hair on it.
A lens (horrors!) cracks or chips or breaks.
A lens just won't stop fogging.
Scleral lens stuff happens. It will get better. A little troubleshooting, a little conversation with the lens provider, a little picking of community brains on Facebook, and pressing on, finding solutions and making it work.
Great timing! I had a bad lens day Saturday. I was visiting a friend I hadn’t seen in a while, but I had to cut my visit short because of pain and more clouding than usual. I was disappointed, but your post reminds me that these things happen to the best of us. BTW, one trick that helps me look for bubbles is to shine my iPhone flashlight at my eye in the mirror, then I will look for the shadows cast by the bubbles. The bubbles themselves are hard to see but they will cast tiny black shadows on the eye which you can see as you pass your flashlight side to side in front of the mirror. I hope this helps (but take with a grain of salt, since I’m still new to this).