Dying PS2 Lens

I have reasons to believe my PS2’s lens is going down the crapper, fast. It’s now having occasional troubles to start games, which is bearable, but much more consistently, during gameplay, it’ll take longer and longer for stuff to load up. Not just areas, but actions and voice files will keep experiencing delays and after several minutes of playing the whole thing slows down pretty badly. It gets better if I let it rest, but it makes continuous playing impossible.

I know death is inevitable, but is there ANYTHING I could do to make it last longer? I just need it to hold up for a couple months. I never did any sort of maintenance to it, so would doing anything to clean the lens or anything might help? I have a thin model, if that’s relevant.

The goddamn thing is like a child to me. Buying it at the very least was painful enough to be comparable to childbirth.

you might try cleaning it with isopropyl alchohol and a q-tip