I just got contacts today and it is frickin' amazing! Everything is clear and there is nothing getting in the way and they don't even feel that weird to me. I had a terrible eye phobia and the technician who helped was a genius--she let me come to the conclusions as to how it worked rather than just told me what to do.

It is really cool--all of you w/ glasses should try it.

lrschum

yawn...I got the laser surgery done. Contacts use to hurt my eyes by the end of the day. I decided to go for total freedom. Nothing like having your eyes zapped with a laser beam and waking up to 20/20 vision (mine were -8.5 before surgery).

My eyes aren't that bad so the contacts are really thin (and I got a softer one that fits my eye better) so I don't even know they're there.

And I've had a sort of light sensitivity for years so my eyes always vaguely ache if I am not wearing sunglasses outside.

I know you guys talk about frame quite alot. So tis might spark conversation.

"I can pee clearly now that my liver's gone"

I prefer this soft, fuzzy haze. Wearing my glasses makes everything look so harsh by comparison. The world is a much warmer place when you have bad vision.

_exactly_ I freaked out the first day I got glasses, everything was so hard, when a group of people were moving around, all their faces were so sharp, it was ugly. Soft focus is good.

nice G4 and LaCie HD... ;-)

i've tried contacts before - i have a crippling case of eye phobia however. the last time i got them the nurse had to hold open my eye while the doctor tried to force the contact in. they couldn't get them in and i never could by myself. i don't know how you guys can touch your eyes...it's just not something i'm capable of apparently. *sigh* i wish i could though.

Is this eye phobia a common thing? I've fainted the last two times I was having my eyes looked at.

I've heard that a lot of men in their twenties have an eye phobia. I know I certainly did/do. I say "did" because I can put them in now, and also "do" because it still freaks me out a bit.

I know that some people have it way worse than I do. They are really easy to take out, it's keeping both eyes open when you put them in that sucks. I thought I had put on in this morning but apparently it flipped off and landed on the bathroom floor--it's a miracle I didn't step on it!

They are taking a little getting used to (I have a minor headache after wearing them at work and reading off of a computer screen all day), but I am already when I put my glasses back on I am like: "this isn't as good as the contacts, put me in...put me in...

But not until tomorrow.

lrschum

I haven't had any problems with them so far... Except for that day that the left one had a tear in it and I didn't notice untill the day after...

Need to go get another set of the disposables soon. Glasses just don't work when you're wearing a winter facemask...

s/liver/kidney stone/?

mmmmm ... sed is our friend (or the p word if you prefer)

one night, while severly under the influence of some funky fungus, i sent my mind reeling by putting my glasses back on.

[i'm about -3/3.5ish, so not too bad]. but it was a pretty astounding thing to experience everything suddenly being in literal focus...

fsnl
sparky

I speak from experience when I say that, regardless of what your optometrist tells you, it's a REALLY good idea to take your contacts out every night, even if they're soft disposables. I had left mine in for about a week (they were good for 15 days), and woke up in the middle of the night with searing pain in my sockets. Stumbled into the bathroom to sort it all out, flipped the light switch, and... nothing.

Long and short, I was 90%+ blind for two whole days. Went to the emergency room, where they discovered that the lenses had managed to work a small circular divot in the whites of my eyes around my iris, effectively "spraining" them to the point where my pupils became, err... fixed into the fully dilated position. My vision was slow to recover, I was ridiculously photosensitive for weeks afterwards, and my eyes have never been fully the same since.

On the plus side, I got to stay home from work for two days and drink beer in the dark accompanied by a completely random assortment of selections from my music collection. 'Twas surprisingly relaxing.

Isolated incident? Not according to the emergency room attenadants and the battery of eye specialists that I saw in the following week. Food for thought, just my $.02, your mileage may vary, etc.

Glasses por vida.

Or you could just have Lasik surgery and never worry again. Of course, with the money I spent on Lasik I could have bought several new bikes...

Again, not to be the hapless contrarian here, but I had a friend go completely and PERMANENTLY blind thanks to complications from Lasik surgery. Granted, this occurred in the early years of the procedure, and I'm sure that much in the way of the variables have been eliminated from the equation by now, but for my money, there's just no way I'm gonna roll the dice with my vision.

i like my glasses. and so do the girls.

It is really not like rolling dice. There are certain parameters that dictate the extent of success, for example your cornia(?) thickness. Around 2001/2002 the german company that makes the lasik machine had a 'upgrade' and the lasik procedure has been perfected for quite some time, especially in canada (US is only catching up now). There is only one step that is manual and good experienced hands are a must, that is in cutting out the circular region of cornia (with some sextant type device) and opening the cut out layer like a lid, so that laser can zap inside. The lid will be closed after the procedure and healing begins immediately. I have heard of compilcations with lasik, but in most cases it was evident that the doctors over-sold the procedure and operated on eyes that were not really suitable. Do your research and you will find that lasik, when performed on suitable patients, has very high success rate. Atleast the success rate was high enough to convince me (and I am really paranoid when it comes to my vision). I cannot imagine now how I lived for 15 years with those annoying glasses and contacts.

It is perfectly safe, probably safer than a lifetime of contacts. I know many, many people who have had it done and not one has had a problem. Of course, I went to a top NYC eye surgeon who charged big $$, not one of these $500/eye slice and dicers. Worth every penny, and the miniscule risk.

Yeah, I was talking to my boss the other day and he said that he wore contacts for years and then got the surgery done and it was the best decision ever. Apparently, there is a greater statistical risk of poking your eye out while putting in contacts than having a major complication w/ lasik (i.e. partial or total blindness). And from what I've heard, poking your eye out is really, really hard to do when you put in contacts

As far as I know no one has ever gone blind with Lasik. It just isn't possible if you know anything about the physiology of the eye and how the surgery works. Most common things that go wrong are having halos around lights and dry eyes. For some folks it just doesn't work. But I have to say it changed my life forever. Best money I ever spent.