How to Reposition a Slipped Contact Lens

If your contact lens slips out of place, fear not. It's nearly impossible for it to disappear behind your eyeball.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Mirror
• Saline Solution

1. Wash your hands thoroughly before touching any part of the eye.

2. Pull up your upper lid while you look down at a mirror to search for the lens. Pull down your lower lid to search for the lens in the lower part of your eye.

3. If you are still unable to locate the lens, put saline solution in your eye and move your eye up, down and side to side. This might dislodge the lens.

4. If you are still unable to find it, take a breather. The lens might work its way out if you rest your eye. Add more saline solution if your eye is feeling irritated.

5. Once you've located the lens, close your eye and use your finger to move it gently back into place. It might help to roll your eye toward the lens.

6. If the lens has curled up like a taco shell, move it to the outer corner of your eye and remove it.

7. If you are unable to locate the lens or if you are suffering from extreme pain, contact your eye doctor.

Tips & Warnings

• A lens can curl up and lodge itself deep in the upper lid. Search carefully for it.
• If a contact lens repeatedly slips out of place, visit your eye doctor for a refitting. An improper fit can lead to a corneal abrasion, an ulcer or an infection.

on 9/26/2006 I`m supposed to use a new pair of contacts every month, but sometimes I wear them longer than that and the older they get, the more likely it is that I will rub my eyes and one will get stuck folded up under my upper eyelid. Here are some strategies for getting them out:

1. Have a friend help. If you aren't too squeamish about letting someone else near your eye and you have a friend who is not too squeamish either, have them look up under your lid and gently pull the contact out with the pad of their finger while you hold the lid back and look down at them. This way you don't have to worry with looking at a mirror while you jab at your eye. Someone with slender, short-nailed fingers is best. Moms are good people to ask.

2. Squirt saline solution in the eye to dislodge it. Lean over a sink, hold your eyelid back with one hand and squeeze a bottle of contact solution with the other. You can angle a thin stream of saline solution up into places too narrow for your finger to reach. Just keep the drain closed if you don't want the contact to get washed away.

3. Wait an hour or two. Try to go about your business as normal, and in the course of your normal blinking and eye movement it might work its way out on it's own. So give it a little bit of time before you try anything drastic that might leave you with bloodshot irritated eyes.

4. When all else fails, close your eye and rub like heck. Don't put too much pressure rubbing downward toward the center of your eyeball, but rub in all directions at an angle to the surface of your eye. Rub, roll, and blink, and you might get that dang contact to move someplace reachable. Your eye will get irritated, but you might be finally able to get that dang contact.

I've never had to go to a doctor to get a contact out; one of these strategies has always worked for me eventually. Of course, if I changed my contacts on schedule, kept them moist with drops, and avoided rubbing my eyes, this wouldn't happen to me so much in the first place. Good luck!

on 2/21/2006 It is in fact utterly impossible for a lens to go behind the eye as there is a membrane connected to the underside of the lid that attaches to the socket. The back of the eye is a sealed unit, nothing can get in there. This is a common fear of first time contact lens wearers (until their optometrist corrects them), but is a bit of an urban myth. What people are usually referring to in this instance is the lens moving under the upper lid after having folded over due to incorrect insertion - a contact lens in this position can be intensely uncomfortable and can feel like the lens is behind the eye.

on 2/21/2006 I find that if a lens goes AWOL, it has almost always slid to the inside bottom corner of my eye, near the nose. So look there first - it can be really wedged in there too, but you can often see a wrinkle in the lens. Put your finger on it and slide it back across.

on 2/14/2006 I had a lens flip over like a taco shell and get lodged in what felt like my upper eyelid. No matter what I did, it seemed to be invisible. Meanwhile, I had already taken out the other lens. I'm so nearsighted that I really couldn't see under my eyelid when I lifted it up to look in the mirror. I tried both the other tips listed above, but what I ended up doing, was to put the left lens back in the left eye. This allowed me to see in focus out of my left eye, so that I could look at the right eyelid more accurately. I used a hand mirror facing up toward my eye. I lifted the eyelid and then noticed the folded lens was crammed in the corner close to my nose. By lifting the lid and then looking left and right with the right eye, I was able to dislodge the folded lens and remove it.

on 11/22/2005 Once I lost a contact lens in my eye. I could not find it no matter what I did. I wasn't even sure the lens was still there, but my eye still hurt horribly. I took the lens out of my other eye, put it in the irritated eye, blinked a few times, and discovered that the lens from my other eye had stuck to the lost lens. I simply pulled both lenses out of my eye and separated them. Then they were good to go back in.