Eye Anxiety: multifocal contact lenses edition

July 19, 2016 10:34 AM

You are not my ophthalmologist. I'll see my doc again in a couple of months. I am asking (pretty please) for experiences/advice with wearing multifocal disposable contact lenses. Did they work for you? This might seem like a dumb question, but I am trying to figure out if I need a different Rx, or if these kinds of contacts just won't work for me. The threads I found on multifocal contacts are a few years old, and perhaps technology has changed, so here goes (super-sensitive-skin snowflakes follow):

I am 46 years old and have myopia (-8.00). That's no typo. Like many contact lens wearers with myopia, I read much better with my plain monofocal eye glasses (I keep the Rx updated each year). But even with high index lenses, my glasses leave marks on my nose and start to hurt and bother me after a few hours. I like my glasses, but I do not want to wear them everyday, all day, and so I need/want to have contact lenses too.

(Let me get this out of the way: I am NOT looking for advice on getting new glasses - featherweight or titanium or otherwise. I have very fair skin that "dents" and marks easily, and even the smallest, lightest reading glasses or high-end sunglasses make red marks on my nose. I have my glasses adjusted regularly, and they still dent my nose. And I cannot wear the kind of glasses with those clear adjustable pads - even worse. Even wearing a hat for a few minutes will leave a red line on my forehead - and I am likely not dehydrated as a well intended friend has suggested, as I drink 3-4 liters of water a day. Just to say, I would like to focus here only on multifocal contact lenses and not eyeglasses.)

So...My ophthalmologist (MD) prescribed multifocal ACUVUE OASYS Brand Contact Lenses for Presbyopia, which I have been wearing for the last couple of months. (The Rx reads "add +1.75," which I assume is the magnifying power equivalent to reading glasses.) My distance vision with the contacts is great. Reading close up or small text, while better than before, is not great. After experimenting, I found that I read better when wearing reading glasses (+1.25 or +1.50) with the multifocal contacts.

I guess it might sound obvious that the contact lens Rx for the "+" part simply needs to be increased, but maybe not, as there are complaints all over the internet that the multifocal contacts just don't work for many people. Might that relate to people with high myopia in any way? Any ideas? Does anyone successfully wear multifocal contacts plus reading glasses? Or is that a bad idea? Thanks much for reading this huge wall!!

posted by quixotictic to Health & Fitness (7 answers total)

A couple of years ago, I had a pretty much identical experience. I went back to normal contact lenses, and reading glasses. The impression I got from my eye doctor is that this is a typical experience.
posted by MexicanYenta at 10:45 AM on July 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

I also find that the reading glasses aspect of these contacts does not work for me. My wife claims that she has some improvement, but every time I give her something to read that I can not puzzle out she has to put on reading glasses so I think it is just a placebo effect.
posted by Lame_username at 10:52 AM on July 19, 2016

I have a prescription for distance in my right eye and for reading in my left eye, and with that, my contacts work really well for me.
posted by xingcat at 11:00 AM on July 19, 2016

What MexicanYenta said. In my case, I abandoned contacts entirely, just as a data point.
posted by Riverine at 11:07 AM on July 19, 2016

Best answer: I've gotten aggressively more farsighted as I age and combined with an astigmatism, I ended up with needing to wear trifocals by 40. After a year and half with the glasses full time, I couldn't bear it. The damn things are always dirty, they either slide down my nose in the heat or pinched my skull and I hated the loss of peripheral vision. But I also couldn't go back to not being able to read my phone.

I went in and begged for a solution with contacts. I'm wearing the Acuvue Oasys lenses as well and the first pair, the doctor didn't tweak the up close vision as much as he should have. So I went back a week later and got it bumped up a notch. My reading and middle distance vision is now near perfect but I did sacrifice some of my distance vision. But since I spend my day on computers, reading books, or doing up close work, it seemed worth it. You can totally go back in and get them readjusted.

Just FYI, I tried the monovision option where one is for distance and one for reading, but since I spend 80% of my day on a computer and the screen is right there in the middle between reading and distance, it didn't work at all for me.

My doctor did tell me that I'll never be like it was in my youth, but it is amazing to be able read small print again. Multifocal lenses can work, it's just a bit of a balancing act.
posted by teleri025 at 11:11 AM on July 19, 2016

Best answer: I've been wearing multifocal contacts for a several years now. My right eye is -8.00 and my left eye is -10.00, and I had been wearing plain distance contacts with reading glasses and wasn't really happy with it; multifocals changed my life.

At my last exam, I mentioned that the reading part was getting more difficult, and the optometrist tweaked the distance down a bit and the reading up a bit, and now it's much better. I don't feel like I've sacrificed anything on my distance vision to improve reading and it all feels good.

I'd go back and ask the optometrist if they can improve the prescription - most are happy to give you a trial pair to see if a particular prescription will work for you. If multifocals work for you, I think it's worth pursuing to tweak the prescription to make it better.
posted by mogget at 11:21 AM on July 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: Exactly the kind of experiences I was hoping to read! Thank you, I'll ask for an adjustment for the "up close" prescription, as I spend much of my day reading and working on at my laptop. I did try the "one eye for close and one for distance" for about a year, and it did not work for me. Much appreciated!
posted by quixotictic at 11:54 AM on July 19, 2016