Christmas Break was great! 3 wonderful weeks back in Utah was just what I needed to recharge my batteries. The biggest shock was going from sunny 50 degree Memphis to snowy 5 degree Utah. Beautiful…but cold.
But all that feels like it was so long ago now because it has been a busy week. With National Boards coming up in March, any significant free time is basically reserved for studying. The test is about 500 questions which from what I’ve heard is one of the longest board exams of any of the health professions. Yikes!
Besides Boards, I’ve had to jump right back into clinic and I certainly didn’t get any warm-up patients. My first patient was a follow-up up with quite a story to tell. We’ve been treating her red eyes, but the day before she came to see us for a follow-up, she decided to have her company’s nurse look at it instead. Details are unclear on exactly what happened there, but the patient said her eyes felt like they had glass in them by the time she got home that night. Luckily, we were able to take care of her and by Monday her eyes should be clearing up nicely.
My next patient came in after failing the DMV screening. He was 55 with long-standing diabetes and high blood pressure and came to see us for his first eye exam ever! Unlike my morning patient, his findings were all in the back of the eye. Bleeding, oxygen deprived areas, and a suspicious looking optic nerve. The most challenging part of the exam were those tiny pupils of his! It look a bit longer to get good views of his retina through his 3 mm dilated pupils. A little perseverance though and I got what I needed.
Today, I switched gears as my clinic assignment put me in Vision Therapy. I had a great experience this morning helping Dr. Boon with a teenage girl. We were able to have fun and get a lot done at the same time. Couldn’t have been any better. So it was a full week for me with all the variety: front of the eye, back of the eye, and binocular vision. Wahoo!