Slices of life

Optometric Management,  May 2000  by Higgins, Donna A

• E-mail
• Print
• Link

Unique moments with patients keep this O.D. having fun.

Sometimes caring for patients can be intensely frustrating, but there are always those wacky moments with some patients that can make our work entertaining, as well as rewarding.

An all-out sing-along

One of my favorite patients, Billy, is a developmentally disabled man in his early 60s. He's always a challenge to examine because he doesn't want me to shine the bright light into his eyes, and he doesn't fully comprehend what an eye exam is.

I asked my staffer Mary Ann to assist me. She'd helped me with Billy the last time. As usual, we weren't having much luck getting him to cooperate with testing. Mary Ann asked him to open his eyes; instead, he clamped them shut and began singing, "La, La, La."

Mary Ann and I decided to join in. At the top of our lungs we began singing, "La, La, La."

Billy was absolutely delighted to be leading a chorus. He smiled and, sure enough, held his eyes wide open while we all sang along. I managed to get a thorough internal and retinoscopy on him while we all sang the "La, La" song for 5 minutes.

After this adventurous eye exam had reached its conclusion, I led Billy back to the waiting room. There, I discovered two older ladies waiting patiently for their exams, red in the face and almost falling off their chairs from laughing.

One of the ladies joked, "I've never had this much fun waiting at a doctor's office."

He's always there

Louise is a timid lady in her 90s. She has glaucoma and, like many patients, is wary of anything touching her eyes. Mary Ann knows Louise from church, so I thought Mary Ann would have the best results teaching Louise to administer the drops.

As Mary Ann was coaching Louise, she said, "Now, you can't be so scared about putting these drops in. Jesus is standing right behind you."

Without missing a beat, quiet and shy Louise replied, "Do you suppose He'd put the drops in for me as long as He's here?"

A room with a view

Encouraged by half her family, Dora, 85, came for her first eye exam ever. She was suffering from severe vision loss brought on by cataracts.

I saw her again at the office a few weeks after bilateral cataract surgery. She'd perked up considerably and now could see 20/25 in each eye. Dora was going on, describing all the wonderful things she could see now. I was expecting something heartwarming - like maybe how she'd enjoyed seeing her granddaughter's face, or something along those lines.

Instead, Dora's comment was, "My favorite thing is being able to see when I'm in the bathroom."

I cringed. It was a moment when I wished I'd gone into engineering instead of optometry.

As it turns out, Dora has a perfect view of a convenience store from her bathroom window, and she loved to watch the patrons enter and exit.

It's amazing what people miss.

Challenging our conventions

Optometry offers many challenges as a career, but who knew keeping a straight face would be one of them? The only thing that is entirely predictable about working with people day in and day out, is that the unpredictable is guaranteed to happen. Moments like these are what I consider to be the great rewards of our profession. OM

DO YOU HAVE A MEMORABLE EXPERIENCE YOU'D LIKE TO SHARE? Contact Tobin Sharp at (215) 643-8127 or sharpte@boucher1.com, so we can talk about getting your story published.

Copyright Boucher Communications, Inc. May 2000
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved