Day 151: Perspective2 min read

Today’s inane image of the day:

My first attempt ever at making chocolate cupcakes over break was a success! They were fluffy, chocolatey and amazing… I just had to post this image because I devoured the last one of this batch a couple minutes ago.

Even though we did a lot of waiting around [bah! lack of productivity makes me grumpy!], I definitely thought that overall the day was a positive experience. Our course director for Neuroscience is a great lecturer [albeit not as skilled with technology as the brain and scalpel] and in APM we learned about, and practiced, a full ophthalmologic [definitely had to autocorrect that one] examination. And when I say full, I mean like fully dilated pupils.

Let me preface this with the fact that I have never had my eyes examined by an ophthalmologist and have never had my eyes dilated [woohoo for good vision]. So it makes sense that I was concerned about essentially losing control [ha, totally type A medical student personality here] of my vision in one eye and it didn’t help much to hear that someone once fainted from receiving the drops. Obviously I’m still here, and I’m able to [somewhat] write this entry, so it all worked out… but it’s still an uncomfortable feeling.

[Yes, my left eye is still dilated…]

This experience and a couple of other things made me think about different perspectives. Trying to focus on my name badge with my dilated eye was painful and made me feel uncomfortable — going from normal vision to lopsided and distorted was literally like losing a part of me. A huge part of me, too. It was a completely novel perspective on eyesight — yes, prior to this experience I understood how difficult it would be psychologically to lose sight — but actually [even partially] experiencing it really made a huge difference. And the fear that accompanied the sensation came as a bit of a shock to me.

In so many ways, medicine is forcing me to see how resilient, yet fragile, we all are.

[Of course, the best part was actually being able to visualize the optic disk and fovea. Dilation really makes a world of a difference in seeing the retinal structures.]