I've had my contact lenses for only a couple of weeks and it's still taking me several tries to put them in. I'm about to go on vacation and will stay in a home that has cats, which I'm allergic to and irritate my eyes.
Should I go back to wearing glasses while I'm there or keep working with my lenses with all that cat dander around? And, if I stop wearing my lenses, will I have to start all over?
If the cats are an issue already without contact lenses, then I would advise the person to stay away from the lenses while they're around the cats.
Femida Zisnani
Candace Elliott, The Journal
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Font:****They might have to wean themselves back onto the lenses again, depending on how long they stop wearing them, but you should only be wearing your lenses for eight hours a day, anyway, because there is very limited oxygen permeability through contact lenses. You should always take a break, even with the long-wearing lenses.
Most people don't like giving up contact lenses once they've started wearing them, so if you have allergies, once you've learned to manage the lenses, you can take antihistamines that are made specifically for the eyes.
Most of these eye drops have a 12-hour duration, so lens wearers can take a drop in the morning, wait about 15 or 20 minutes, before putting their contacts in, then they know they're good for the day
You never want to put in any medicated drops with your contacts in, because your contacts will absorb the medication. It's different sometimes if you're wearing a disposal lens; for example, a one-day lens.
Sometimes when we do surgery, we do a bandage lens and patients still have to use their medications at the same time, so there are allowances for that. But day-to-day, we prefer they put their allergy drops in, wait a few minutes, then put their contacts lenses in.
The dander, the cat fur, if lens users are practising proper hygiene, washing their hands before they try and put their lenses in, those sorts of things should be negligible, because in everyday life there are lots of allergens around.
Femida Zisnani, optometrist,
Clearly Lasik Canada
E-mail questions for Ask the Expert to czdeb@thejournal.canwest.com or mail them to Ask the Expert, Body & Health, Edmonton Journal, P.O. Box 2421, Edmonton, AB, T5J 2S6
