I’m torn on contacts. I do wear them every day, but only because I haaate wearing glasses and never wore them. They do get on my nerves and I find that they dry out a bit by the end of a work day, but I know many people with no issues so it might just be my eyes (and I might need to try another brand).

I have mild astigmatism and don’t wear the contacts specially designed to correct it – I just wear standard contacts. I can tell that my vision is slightly blurrier with contacts than glasses, but overall I’m ok. The next time I get my eyes check I’ll ask about trying the special ones because they should move around less on my eyes and that’s something that annoys me about regular contacts (since astigmatism makes your lenses less round, the contacts have a harder time staying centered).

I started with the daily lenses. You’re supposed to throw them away each day and get a new pair the next day, and mine were about $1 per pair. I typically wore them at least 2 or 3 days though.

Now I wear the 2 week lenses. I typically wear them for at least 3-4 weeks before throwing them out and getting another pair (don’t tell my eye doctor!) so they’re not as expensive as you’d think. I only wear my contacts for about 9-10 hours per day (while I’m away at work) and take them out when I get home, so I don’t wear them all the time. I also only wear them on weekends for an hour or two (usually while we run errands) and then I take them out again.

Even though they’re a little annoying at times, I like them much better than glasses! I want to try some new brands to see if something works a little better for me personally, but overall I vastly prefer them to glasses for work and other situations.

I pretty much love my contacts. Look for Acuvue Oaysis ones… They are super soft and squishy! Acuvue also makes the astigmatism ones as well. As for cost, go to Costco. It is the cheapest place I’ve found so far!

You do need special ones for astigmatism, so keep that in mind

I wore contacts for awhile and I have astigmatism, but it wasn’t significant enough that I needed special contacts, I might now.  I stopped wearing the contacts years ago because they just bugged the poop out of me.   They weren’t so terrible once they were in, but I had a bear of a time getting them in my eyes, I have long lashes and an over active blinking reflex, so contacts just led to many tears and recriminations every day in the bathroom.  Plus girls in glasses are sexy! 

A few years ago I went thru the same thought process- so I got glasses and some contacts to try. The contacts are NOT more convenient in my opinion- not as simple to wake up and have instant vision, at first your eyes get tired of wearing them so you have to fiddle with putting them in, taking them out and then switching to your glasses. And my vision with contacts just was not as ideal as with glasses. I WANTED to like them- but I like to not fuss with stuff like that. I thought I could leave them in and change them so often as directed- nope, at least not at first.

I have to wear glasses for reading and even my far-sightedness is starting to go. I’ll be needing bifocals before long. I would try contacts, but I can’t even stand having the eye doctor use his little touching instrument to test my eye pressure…and with how often my eyes dry out and I have my fingers in them rubbing them…. Well, it would be a no for me. But yeah, glasses are terrible. I fell asleep with mine on this week and put a nice crimp in the bridge of my nose because I’d leaned on them. Ouch.

Michelle, I just remembered that my doctor gave me sample contacts for free before I had to pay for the prescription. I would at least go in and see if they can give you a pair or two and try them out.

I wear acuvue night and day lenses and they work wonderfully for me. I tend to wear them long beyond the one month limit though (which is not healthy btw) They rarely itch or burn or bother me in any way and I can leave them in for a week at a time and not notice them. They are very low on the hassle meter. I hate my glases because my vision is sooooooo bad that my lenses are 1/4 inch thick on the sides so they are heavy and don’t work with many frames and I hate how I look in them. Contacts were a much better solution.
Don’t get rid of your glasses though, if you do choose contacts. It’s nice to have them for 911s.

It seems obvious but if you have a problem with eye infections you’ll have to be prepared to throw out contacts and the case on occassion and wear glasses for a week or two occassionally. And if you have allergies that make your eyes itchy or red you’ll have times you won’t want to wear them. That was another reason I stopped wearing them, I kept getting pink eye and had to throw contacts away really early and the cases all the time because it kept reinfecting me, it was icky.

I had to pay an additional fee at time of eye exam for contact lens “fitting”(or something like that- measuring the eye for contacts). But I did get a couple of trial pairs to see what worked better. And then I bought a box (of course a box for each eye, as left eye is much worse than right eye) and never ended up using all the contacts before they expired. Is that normal that most people need a box for each eye because they are different prescriptions???
What is really weird and something to get used to- is to NOT put your glasses on out of habit if you are wearing your contacts. Talk about not being able to see then!!! LOL

I can’t wear glasses. I can’t see out of them and they make me feel dizzy. I wear contacts all the time. That’s all I wear, all day every day. I get the Focus Dailies, which are daily disposables. The reason is because the two week disposables would last me maybe 5 to 7 days before I wouldn’t be able to wear them. I’m not going to lie, they are expensive. They are like $60 for a box of 90 (which lasts 45 days). I might as well get Lasik at this point, it would pay for itself in just a few years.

Katnip, my husband has two different prescriptions so he has to keep track of which contact goes in which eye – I think it’s fairly common. I’m lucky that I wear the same one in each so I don’t have to remember two different boxes of contacts.

Alot of people need 2 boxes, one for each eye. It’s rare that you actually get the same prescription for both

I wear contacts and have an astigmatism. I absolutely love my contacts and never wear my glasses unless I absolutely have too. Usually, I take out my contacts right before bed and put them in right when I wake up so I don’t even really need my glasses. I find my vision with contacts to be sharper than with glasses because there is no distance between your eye and the lens, which is saying something because my vision is like 20/900 uncorrected!

If you’re thinking about contacts, I’d talk to your doctor and ask for a trial pair and discuss if your astigmatism is bad enough to need torics. I’ve worn contacts for most of my life and when I switched to toric I found them to be a difficult adjustment for me. Toric contacts are thicker than regular contacts, which means someone who is prone to their eyes drying out might have more problems because your eyes can’t “breathe” as easily. Torics also have to sit on your eye in a specific orientation in order to correct your astigmatism, which means if something causes them to move on your eye, your vision will get blurry until they re-orient themselves. Regular contacts don’t have this orientation issue. I eventually got tired of dealing with torics and asked if my astigmatism was severe enough to need correction and it isn’t. So I switched back to regular contacts.

It doesn’t hurt to go in and tell your doctor you’re interested. He’ll give you a trial pair to use for 2 weeks and ask you to come back to evaluate. If the contacts are uncomfortable, you can ask to try a different brand. In fact, he’ll probably be able to recommend a better brand of contacts based on what you say you didn’t like. You can keep repeating that process until you find something you like or decide to just stick with glasses. Also, keep in mind that finding a contact solution that works for you also makes a big difference. If you have a good solution, you really shouldn’t need eye drops very often at all. It probably sounds like a hassle but I definitely recommend contacts to anyone who is interested. Little things like not having to wipe glasses all the time when it rains or having glasses that fog up was a wonderful change for me!

ETA: I just noticed that you said you often forget your glasses which I presume means your vision isn’t poor enough to need your glasses to do basic things. Therefore, I’d be surprised if your astigmatism is bad enough to absolutely have to be corrected. If your contact prescription isn’t very high and you don’t need to have torics, that will significantly lower the cost of contacts for you. Cost is based on your prescription, and brand of course.

I should really get contacts, I hate my glasses lol never wear them out and constantly keep them broken because they get knocked off wherever I put them and then someone steps on them. My current frames are bent away from my head thanks to being stepped on and they are plastic, so can’t bend them back.

My cousins always wear contacts, they find glasses too annoying and they never had any issues. I’m all for contacts.

I have very sensitive eyes when it comes to contacts, I like them but Im kind of a grab and go kind of person so I wear my glasses more. If you are having issues with keeping your glasses clean and you are just using a cloth and not a spray glasses cleaner? If you are not using a glasses formulated spray with your cloth that could be what is bothering you (You also never want to wipe your glasses when they are dry even with a micofiber cloth, you can still scratch your glasses). also are your glasses non-glare? if they arnt is it a possibility that it is the glare that you are seeing?

Another thing you also want to think about is that even if you get toric contacts you will always see better with glasses than contacts because they can be made more accurate than your actual prescription. for example: say you are a -1.00 -1.25 X 180 in each eye. the first set of numbers is your distance correction and the second is the amount of astigmatism correction you need. The last set of numbers is the axis rotation that your glasses need to be at to give you 20/20 vision with your astigmatism. so because everyone has a different axis and contact lenses are round you could also experience times when you cant see very well because of the way that the contacts are turned.

Another think you also want to consider is if you are sensitive it could mean that you cant wear contacts as much as you would like or you are limited to certain types. I am one of those sensitive people. I cant wear my contacts for long periods of time, my eyes are slightly allergic to silicone, which a lot of soft contacts are made from therefore I have to wear daily contact lenses and some times they still bother me. My best advise is to go and talk to your eye care professionals, they have all of the answers you are looking for and will even help you decide what is best for you.

My boyfriend always wore contacts, but now he can’t. He wore them longer than he was supposed to and got some.. er, holes in his eyes. I can’t remember the proper name for it. o_O

He wears glasses most of the time, and will wear his contacts once in a while.

I prefer glasses. I’m scared of putting anything in my eyeball. I’ve been told by some people that it would change my apperance if I wore contacts.. no thanks, I am who I am

Let us know your decision

I would suggest consulting more than one eye doctor to find out exactly which kind of contacts they would recommend. It can vary with your prescription (that corrects the astigmatism) so they would be the best ones to say what material you need to be limited to. Many years ago an astigmatic contact was a bit thicker on the bottom because they had to stay in place to correct the vision, rather than being a circle that can rotate all around without effecting your sight. That may no longer be true, however.

I would also recommend you get your glasses checked by a different optometrist than the one you got them from. If you are having any trouble at all (wiping them off constantly or blurring or dizziness) it could well be due to a misalignment or error in the construction and they didn’t get your prescription done correctly. And some materials that are supposed to be good for some issues, like anti-glare or scratch resistant, can add to the sense of being dirty and you can’t use them after all. I had a pair like that.

My own eyes are a terrible example, but in a nutshell, I am farsighted with astigmatisms in both eyes that are off the chart so they require a very extreme correction. I can’t even get lasik surgery because it is beyond the safety range. So the contacts I tried – hard, soft, semi-permeable and astigmatic – just couldn’t give me 20/20 vision comfortably.

I understand the some sensitivity comes from your eye being more round like a ball than flatter like an egg’s side, so your eyelid comes into contact with it more than others, and that can make it a little bit harder to ajust, but again, that my no longer apply to the newer materials.

Despite all of this, I got my first pair of glasses when I was 4, and for me it was a miracle to see. I wear them like a second nose. The titanium frames and light weight thin lenses that don’t magnify much anymore are a real blessing, too. Without them I’d be lost. I think I became an artist partly due to the awareness of how things look when in focus – miraculous!

If you have Sam’s Club near you and either you or someone you know has a membership, they have some really good deals on quite stylish frames. I got some snazzy Oscar de la Renta frames for well under $100. I have no idea what the contact pricing is like, but maybe some new frames would make you like your glasses more! I know I get bored with mine after awhile, it sucks to wear the same accessory every day. And they might have good deals on contacts, that I have no idea about.

I have been wearing contacts since I was 14, so for 22 years! Aaaagggg…. Where has the time gone!! I wear acuvue oasis now, wear for 4 weeks ( take out while sleeping ) and have no issues. Before that I started having really dry eyes with the cheaper contacts. Switching to the oasis really made a difference, oh and using Biopure, I think it’s called, solution. My vision is also really bad, like 20/800. Legally blind without correction. No astigmatism. Perfect canidate for LASIK, but I can’t afford it! Oh well, that’s a different post :p

I have been wearing contacts since I was 14, so for 22 years! Aaaagggg…. Where has the time gone!! I wear acuvue oasis now, wear for 4 weeks ( take out while sleeping ) and have no issues. Before that I started having really dry eyes with the cheaper contacts. Switching to the oasis really made a difference, oh and using Biopure, I think it’s called, solution. My vision is also really bad, like 20/800. Legally blind without correction. No astigmatism. Perfect canidate for LASIK, but I can’t afford it! Oh well, that’s a different post :p

I started wearing contacts a while back, but had to switch back to glasses. The contacts gave me headaches and made me feel sleepy… Not good when you have to pay attention to classes. Also the time it took me to put them in the morning just made me get grumpy.
I have different prescriptions for each eye, but I didn’t have two boxes… Instead I had a box with two compartments.
My eyes aren’t that very sensitive, but my contacts were kind of cheap so I don’t know if my sleepiness was related to that.