I was supposed to leave mine out for a week, so that it would heal from a bad infection. I felt relief right away, so I know that it's definitely healing. The other night I had a thought that maybe when I go to pop the prosthesis back in, it might not fit. I tried to fit it in the next morning and sure enough it WAS very, very tight. I left it in for a few hours, so that it would "settle in", but my question is does the socket get smaller without it, right away?? And, how can you stretch it back to fit the prosthesis?? If I leave it in all day, will it go back to normal??

TIA.

Dear Chris,
i can only tell you what happened to me.
My socket was very sore and i left the eye out and within a couple days i couldn't get the eye back in and as you know i ended up having more surgery.
I'm not saying this will happen to you but please do be careful and keep putting it back in.I think if you leave it in all day the socket will go back to normal size.
As i said maybe this was just a me thing but be careful
Anne xx

I leave mine out for weeks at a time without any problem. If I go for more than a few weeks though, I wear a conformer. The socket will in fact "shrink" but it takes many months and it can be "stretched" back by wearing a series of larger and larger conformers. The soft rubber-like conformers are less likely to cause irritation than the acrylic ones and the type I use have holes in them for applying oitment. You might check with you doctor or occularist to get a few of these for when you go without your eye. Another problem you can encounter when going without is ptosis - a drooping of the eyelid, which the conformer helps prevent. Hope this helps!

I had the same problem as Anne in that in a couple of weeks of wearing a small conformer, the socket had shrunk and I had to have surgery to make a prosthesis fit. The idea that it can be stretched back is not necessarily correct for everyone. It wasn't an option for me.

Thanks, everyone!! I had it in ALL day today and it felt okay, so I guess I needed one full day of wearing it again. I'll give an update on my other thread.

Thanks again!!

One question remains:

If the doctor has advised to keep the prosthetic eye out, how would he then accept the wear of a conformer?

JPH

JPH:

You're correct--the doctor didn't even want a conformer in there. The infection was so bad that they wanted the socket empty for a while. Luckily I got the prosthesis back in, and all is good.