Oct 27, 2008

Found it!

The fundus, at long last, the holy grail of physical diagnosis. SO much easier once you've dilated a patient's pupils rather than just blinding your boyfriend for an hour until his pupils are so constricted that he looks like he's OD'd on heroin in your clumsy efforts to visualize the back of his eye.

I know, med school's sexy, eh?

Also, a tip, when you actually manage to correctly manipulate the ophthalmoscope and the fundus suddenly comes brightly into view, try not to exclaim "oh!" as if you've just seen a magic trick. It confuses the patients, who are led to believe that we know what we're doing.

Opthalmology rotation today, and far cooler than I was expecting, since I'm not usually a big eye person and don't really know much about eyes. We did a full patient history, watched some eye charts, but then go to watch a series of eye exams on people who actually had things wrong with their eyes that we could observe, rather than just peering into the face of our clinical skills buddies for a preset period of time, and then lying our asses off about actually seeing something.

Today we had a traumatic cataract and glaucoma in the same patient, someone with diabetes, some more cataract formation, an infection that was causing the edges of the iris to look black and ragged. Interesting stuff.

This also marks our last hospital visit, though I'm hoping to reschedule one of my bus-associated truancies (though still my fault) because I was really disappointed to miss the surgery rotation. I likey the cutty.

4 comments:

Airor said...

"I likey the cutty"?!?

You DO realize that your future employer will be reading these blogs right?

Anyway, even though I have no idea what all the medical jargon means, I love it when you're happy about discovering things. Thats the Ishie I know and love. Keep up the hard work.

-Yet another internet friend who still keeps tabs on how you're doing.

Ishie said...

Eh, I think my future employers already have plenty to go on. I'm thinking of just changing my name and getting massive reconstructive surgery so no one knows me for the whiny prat that I am.

Thanks for keeping tabs! Hope you're doing well.

Anonymous said...

We got to play with ophthamoloscopes in physio lab the other day. For some reason, I never realized until then how small everything is through one of those things. I mean, it all looks so big in the pictures! I would have felt bed for my partner if she hadn't spent even longer blinding me afterwards.

Ishie said...

I know! Even when you look through the cube, it seems like you should be able to see it like it looks in the textbook pictures.