Journal of Healthy Living

Diagnosing and Dealing with Dry Eyes

Around this time last year, the vision in my right eye was starting to get a little blurry. I wouldn’t notice it at first and it wouldn’t happen every day, but occasionally I would wake up and my eyesight was just a bit off. It was almost undetectable and, the most vexing part, was that it wouldn’t happen every day. So I ignored it for about a month until I was absolutely certain my vision was suffering.

As a little background, I wear contacts, the disposable ones you wear during the day for an entire month, and I was 28 at the time. I, like everyone else, wearing them too long (15 hrs a day?) but I didn’t think wearing them for such an extended period of time was going to cause too much damage.

Fast forward to a month later – I went in to see an optometrist to see if this was an issue. He said my eyes looked OK so he referred me to an ophthalmologist, which is pretty much a hardcore eye surgeon. We ran a few tests and one of them was a dry eyes test.

They take small strips of paper, put them underneath your eyelids, and ask you to close your eyes. The paper soaks up your tears and measures how lubricated your eyes are. Mine, apparently, were very dry. Unfortunately, there’s no cure for dry eyes but there are plenty of things you can do. Here’s what we settled on:

• Installed plugs. The ophthalmologist installed tiny little plugs that blocked the lower tear ducts in my eyelids. This prevented my tears from draining and kept more of my tears on my eyes. At first it was a little uncomfortable, I’d feel a poking sensation if I looked very far to the right or left. Within a day or two, I couldn’t feel them anymore.
• Change contacts. I went to a 24-hour wear contact lens, a day & night variety, so that I had increased permeability. I still take them out at night, just out of habit, so I’m almost 100% safe here.
• Change contact lens solution. I went from an all in one solution, which cleans using enzymes and other chemicals, to one that uses hydrogen peroxide and a special case. Over the course of six hours, the case converts the hydrogen peroxide into saline and cleans the contacts in the process. No enzymes means my sensitive eyes won’t be bothered.

While it sucks that I have dry eyes, fortunately the steps we’ve taken to deal with it aren’t horrible. One downside is that this episode delayed my ability to get Lasik, as the doctor didn’t want to do it while my eyes were unstable. Maybe this year we can give it a shot!

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