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.
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