A day in the life of an OptStudent

Just this morning, I stood in front of the SCCO amphitheater and finally became a doctor! Finally after 4 years of hard work, sacrifice, and more stress than you can think of, I attained the dream that I have been looking forward to when the idea of optometry school first came into mind during my college years. I look back at some of the blog posts and it reminds me of how much we all have been through, all the way back to day one (it's pretty surreal looking back at those old posts!). I am thankful to God, my family, friends, classmates, and especially my soon-to-be wife in two weeks for all their support! I also have a special thank you to all of you who have followed me in this journey in this blog...I would have never thought that I would have taken this website this far! It was always interesting to see people come to school and say, "hey, you're the guy with the website!" and hear back about how OptStudent.com has helped them get through the pre-optometry process. Thanks again for following this blog and wish you all the best in your own paths in becoming an optometrist yourself!

Today was my last day of work as an intern...ever! I must say that my fourth year was the fastest of them all. It seemed like not too long ago when I was relishing my freedom as a fourth year intern, but now I am done with all my training, I now have true freedom! It will be interesting to see how it will be like to see patients without having to have things checked by an attending. But many of the things I have seen have already been pretty routine so I feel fairly confident with my training. I know that like many things in life, schooling is only the basis for more learning. However, I will be in a residency so that will give me more opportunity to grow in my clinical abilities since I'll have mentored training. So all we have now is just a week full of seminars, corporate sponsored lunches/dinners, and meetings...then next Friday is the moment we have all been waiting for...graduation!!!

This past Wednesday I had a patient with a retinal hole, so I performed a technique called scleral depression. Basically what happens is that a small blunt ended instrument - usually a thin metal rod, or a even a cotton-tipped applicator - is pressed onto the eye either directly onto the globe or indirectly against the outer skin of the eyelid. What happens is that the tip applies pressure onto the retina from the outside and creates a greyish bump as you view inside the eye with the BIO.

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