Originally Posted by
QDO1
And when your friend gets a corneal abrasion, or conjunctivitis.. what is he/she going to do... imagine they were a 4 hour drive from home.... You and I know full well that the person is going to put contact lenses back in to see, because they cant see without them. The reasonning behind my philosophy is not to be tyranical, but logical
Here is some food for thought...You can get conjunctivitis, even if you dont wear contact lenses. Conjunctivitis is a contra-indication for wearing lenses (and bloody unfomfortable too), Wearing lenses increases the risk of these sorts of problems. Your friend may well be the most compliant patient ever in terms of lens hygine, but your friend can not take into account all of the potential problems and pitfalls if they are adamant they only will have contact lenses. It is only with backup spectacles can we know (as pratitioners) that the patient HAS A CHANCE of doing the right thing, when things get sticky
You say that the patient has a high prescription - well statistically the higher the prescription, the lower the chance of it being a stock spectacle lens. so when your friend does come swanning in wanting an "emergency" pair of glasses, the answer might be "that will take 3-4 days"
The problem with some contact lens wearers, is that despite being told, they have the impression that they are invincible, and nothing will ever go wrong. As a practitioner who has been in this profession for nearly 20 years, I am telling you that invariably this attitude ends up with a very upset patient, demanding everything yesterday, throwing mud all over the place... why - because suddenly they realised that they infact ought to have listenend, and they thus vent their frustration they have with themselves, onto us useless opticians who "never said they needed specs" and at the slowness of sorting out the new specs, and the slowness of the recovery of thier eyes, and the inconvinience of all of the subsequent check ups
I am not over dramatizing this scenario - this is exactly how it unfolds time and time again in practice
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