When do people give up on wearing contact lenses?

[Walt34]

Have worn glasses since childhood, but never contacts. I was alway spooked by touching my eyes.

That's the way my wife feels about it. She did try a set of "demonstration" contacts the eye doctor gave her but even with me coaching her she couldn't get past the part of putting something in her eyes.

I remember having that issue too, but for me the incentive was stronger. My employer-furnished car was white and the sunlight reflecting off the hood all day (I worked in the car) gave me royal headaches almost daily. Attaching sunglass lenses made them too heavy so that wasn't a solution. Contact lenses were a godsend for me.

 

[MC Rider]

Almost 50 years with contacts and I don't want to give them up.

 

[Sanstar]

I tried them in my mid 20’s. I was at the bedside of a hospital patient when one popped out. I couldn’t get it clean enough to put it back I’m my eye. After 40+ years of treating respiratory patients, I cleaned a lot of gunk off my glasses. So glad to have them between my eyes and a patient’s cough and sneeze.

 

[Koolau]

Have worn glasses since childhood, but never contacts. I was alway spooked by touching my eyes. Hate the annual eye exam.

I thought it would be difficult to touch my eyes while inserting contacts. It took a couple of days and I was okay with it.

What I always hated about the eye exam was the old-technology of using a puff of air to measure internal pressures. Even though I knew it was coming, I'd flinch every time. The new method, which involves numbing the eye with drops and then touching the eyeball with what I assume is a pressure transducer is SO much better. It's like coming out of the dark ages in ophthalmology. YMMV

 

[Time2]

Well, did you get laid more with contacts?

Are you asking for a friend?

 

[Exchme]

Starting about age 58, the reading correction in the bifocal contacts wasn't strong enough anymore so I ended up carrying readers wherever I went, so it started to feel silly to have contacts and glasses. Then about age 60, calcium deposits on the eye made the contacts continually dry and itchy. So I gave up and switched to glasses.

The glasses are much easier to manage than I thought, I should have ditched the contacts a couple years sooner.

 

[MBAustin]

I was told back in college that I could not wear hard lenses due to the configuration of my eye, and soft lenses were just coming out. However every time the technician tried to put them in my eyes, I passed out cold. I tried several times with different ophthalmologists over several years until one tech got the bright idea for me to put the trial lens in my own eye - bingo! I've worn soft toric lenses now for about 40 years. About 15 years ago I had to switch to monovision, which I tolerated but did not enjoy, and I had to wear readers quite a bit. Two years ago there was finally a soft multifocal toric lens that came in my prescription and it's been a game changer - now I just need +1 readers for very precise work like choral singing and fixing mistakes in my knitting. I rarely wear my glasses.

My father (who had the same eye issues I have, only worse) was overjoyed to get contacts a year or so after I did (in his mid-50s). He wore them daily until he started having health problems when he was 79.