Jamie Harwood is a woman on the go, but she developed dry eye a few months ago.
"It really changed my life," said Jamie Harwood.
Her eyes got so irritated and painful she did not want to leave home.
"People stopped asking me to go places and do things, because they knew I would just turn them down because of my eyes," Harwood said.
Now, she is trying out a new pair of contact lenses. However, for Jamie, they are not to help her see, they are to help her severe dry eye disease.
"So this white section in the middle is where the fluid chamber is."
Filled with fluid, the lens vault over the cornea, landing on the white sclera of the eye.
"The vaulted section is filled with a sterile no preserved saline which acts as a liquid bandage to cushion the cornea," said Jill Bryant, a Medical Director from Duke University.
This dry eye contact is much larger than standard contact lenses, custom made with or without vision correction. The lens can be worn all day every day just like a regular contact.
Now, thanks to her new contacts, Jamie can use her eyes for the important stuff. More fun and no more pain.
"I'm really myself again. It's given me back my life," Harwood said.
Not everyone with dry eye should wear these lenses. It is made for the more severe cases that do not get relief with drops and other conventional therapy.
This is not a lens you can buy online; it has to be custom fitted. Measuring the eye for these prescription lenses costs about a thousand dollars, and the lenses themselves can be three hundred dollars or more, depending on the clinic. Most insurance policies do not cover the lenses.
