I’ve been on pins and needles all week waiting for my two trial pairs to come in. Well, today one of the two showed up, the Bausch & Lomb Soflens66 Toric. I couldn’t wait to put them in and try them out. It’s been 7 long years since I’ve worn contacts. I’ve been avoiding them because my ophthalmologist is very expensive and has an extremely busy office, just getting checked in takes a good 20 minutes. An entire session for an exam usually takes well over an hour. With 3 kids, that’s just not feasible for me.

So I turned to the Walmart Optometrist. Thanks to my extensive eye abnormalities that include severe astigmatisms coupled with being near-sighted (not common) and a few other things I don’t care to mention, being fitted for contact lenses is no easy task. I was very sketchy about trying Walmart but my mom assured me the doctor running the show there was very qualified and in fact had his own practice many moons ago. What she failed to mention was just how many moons that was.

This guy had to be well over 70, was wearing corrective lenses himself, and had a twitch you wouldn’t believe. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to be rude or discriminative, but measuring someones eye and examining it requires a steady hand and some decent vision yourself.

Thirty minutes into my fitting and he was making jokes only someone born in 1925 would get and felt it necessary to once again tell me how unusual my eyes are. I’ve heard this many times before and was even had my eyes on display to a group of students that paraded through with their bright light tool. It’s not fun to feel like a freak. Lucky for me, it’s not a condition that is noticeable to the naked eye but like I said, makes being fitting for contacts a nightmare.

So back to the trial pair…I spent a good ten minutes trying to get these little buggers in my eyes only to find that they don’t work for me. The right one is crystal clear, but the tricky left lens provided worse vision that going without any corrective lenses gives me. I’m seriously frustrated!

To top things off I looked at the brand on the package only to find out it was the exact one I asked him NOT to order because I already knew they didn’t work well for me. It’s back to the waiting game for the second trial pair.

So now I sit here and wonder, does anyone else wear toric lenses? What brand worked for you, which ones didn’t?