Contact lens is an ongoing treatment for your particular sight problem, not a permanent "fix".

Contact lens is a small plastic lens placed on the surface of the eye to correct faulty vision, used as an alternative to glasses. Each lens is shaped to fit the eye, and variations in thickness correct the focusing deficiencies that cause long or short sight. Contact lenses may be either hard or soft. 

The original hard lenses was made of polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) and had to be designed to move slightly with each blink to create a pumping action to exchange fresh oxygen-rich tears for stale carbon dioxide laden tears.  They did not permit any air to pass through the material.

The newer rigid gas permeable (RGP) hard lenses, by mixing different polymers into the plastic material, allow some exchange of air.  Hard lenses cover the pupil and part of the cornea.

A soft lens is soft because it absorbs water.  It contains water mostly stem from PHEMA (poly hydroxyethyl methacrylate) and is manufactured dry, then hydrated in saline solution.  They cover the whole cornea and part of the sclera (white part of the eye).

Hard vs Soft

History : The first contact lenses were large, fit over most of the eye and were made of thin, blown glass. In the 1940s, the development of a clear, transparent plastic lenses eliminated the use of breakable glass lenses. They were still big and bulky, covering the cornea and the white portion of the eye.