Soft or semi-soft?

There, now that the suggestive title has caught your eye, let me clarify that it's nothing about what you think it is but a boring treatise on the merits of soft vs semi-soft contact lens.

I have worn contact lens so long that it seems to me that I came out of my mother's womb wearing them. And for long I wore the uncomfortable hard lens, since pay packets those days didn't support the superior soft ones. Later I graduated to the semi-soft kind which, while better than the hard ones, were still a problem.

You felt as if you were walking about with a foreign particle in the eye all the time. And if you manage to fall asleep with the lens, as I was wont to do, get ready for some sandpaper in the eyes when waking up.

And god help you if anything, even an infinitesimal dust particle, went into the eye. If you have a problem of eye-lashes going into your eye like I do, then even god cannot help you. Biking was out, since the visor didn't really protect the eyes against dust and other stuff.

I was keen on graduating to the soft lens but the optician said they were ruled out for me since I suffer from astigmatism. The shape of the eyeball, as I understood him, was not perfect, the curvature was too high, so soft lens were ruled out, he said.

Till one fine day I was told that technological advancement had resulted in soft lens for astigmatics and I was overjoyed. So for the last few years I have been wearing soft lens, and I must say it feels like I am wearing nothing at all. In the eye, I mean. Even the entry of dust particles, eyelashes etc is not half as agonising as before, and I thought I had found my optical heaven.

But I have been realising of late that while I have gained in terms of comfort, I have sacrificed greatly in terms of clarity. The soft lens cloud up more easily, and the vision itself is not too sharp. It's as if I am living life in soft focus. Which is not a bad thing once in a while but not 24×7.

So I have been balanced on the horns of this great dilemma, wondering what to do next. In a few weeks my annual stock of disposable soft lenses run out. Should I renew them, and continue to suffer from slightly blurred vision, or go back to semi-soft lens, with their attendant problem of discomfort even if it comes with sharper focus?

Decisions, decisions Oh, how I hate them!