How to remove contact lenses

Patients new to wearing contact lenses may find it unnerving at first  to reach into their own eyes to insert and remove lenses. This section was  designed to help you remove your contact lenses with as little discomfort,  pain, and uncertainty as possible.

Before you do anything, remember that you'll be touching a very sensitive and vulnerable part of your body, so it's a good idea to wash your hands thoroughly. Go ahead; we'll wait here. All clean? Good. Now, how you remove your contact lenses will depend on what general kind they are. Do you wear hard contact lenses or soft ones? Check below for the proper instructions for each of the two types of contact lens.

Removing Hard Contact Lenses:

The first thing you'll need to do is tamp the contact lens down until it's flush against the surface of the eyeball. Fortunately, there's an easy trick to doing this. All you need to do is touch the skin at the corner of your eye--not the eyeball itself! Now, gently tug the skin in the direction of the ear on that side. This will pull the lids of your eyes down against the eyeball, and by doing so, it'll also tamp your contact lens down safely and painlessly. This is an unstable position for the hard lens, so it wants to pop out. You want it to pop out, so things are going well for everyone concerned. Now all you have to do is cup your hand under your eye to catch the lens when it falls, and then blink. That should eject the lens from your eye directly into your hand. Voila!

If you find you're unable to blink for any reason, as sometimes happens in first aid cases (more on that in a minute), just use the "corner of the eye" trick to tug the lens flat, then gently pinch the upper and lower eyelids and manually "blink" them together with your fingers. This should allow you to catch the lens in your cupped other hand.

Removing Soft Contact Lenses:

A contact lens sits on the iris (colored part) and iris (black part) of the eye. (Okay, so really it sits on the cornea--a thin transparent coating of the iris and cornea--but let's try to be less pedantic). Before removing the lens, we need to slide it onto the sclera, which is the white part of the eye. Unfortunately, the easiest way to do this is to point a finger directly toward the eye. Please, be gentle! (You might find this a smart time to clip your fingernails.) Poking toward the iris of your eye will take some getting used to, but remember, you're not actually touching the eye itself; you're touching the contact lens. If you need to blink a few times from nervousness, this shouldn't upset the process.

Now that you've slid the contact lens over onto the sclera, you should feel it coming slightly loose. After all, it's humped more than the spherical shape of your eyeball, so it doesn't really fit the sclera.  Carefully pinch the contact lens between your fingers and draw it away from the surface of the eye. You'll want to be especially cautious about tearing the lens or eye itself.

Your contact lens should now be free of your eye for cleaning or replacement. Voici!

Parents and teachers who spend time around kids who wear contact lenses are encouraged to learn these removal processes as well. After all, one never knows when a child might become incapacitated in such a way that his or her contact lenses present a health risk. By the way, soft contact lenses dry out quickly in air and should be immersed in saline solution immediately upon removal.