H E L L O :: INTRO + VISION REHAB/LOW VISION
Hello!
This is a journey of my life as an optometry studying in the United States. I'm currently just finishing my 2nd year and will be entering my 3rd year in less than a month. Just thought the journey might interesting to document - though I wish I would have started this sooner.
Currently, in less than 7 hours, I have my Vision Rehabilitation and Low Vision Exam. I'm approximately 60% through the material but it's been painfully slow to get through. The remaining 40% consists of about 4 hours of lecture. Don't worry this becomes the norm and stress levels prior to test taking decreases significantly and rapidly once in optometry school.
I've previously worked in low vision patient care as a vision mate prior to starting optometry school with some minor interest in it. After taking this course, I am fairly certain I do not want to become a low vision optometrist as I don't have the strong interest or patience that's required of it.
One cool conditions that I'm currently studying for this test is called Charles Bonnet Syndrome (CBS). Basically, for CBS patients is that they have an acquired vision loss to the point that there's not enough sensory (visual) information getting to the brain - and then the brain has a panic attack since it doesn't know what to show you as what you see. As a result it just makes things up and you hallucinating things. The interesting part is that these hallucinations are usually pretty crazy and non-sensical (is that a word?) and it scares a lot of patients into thinking that they are going crazy. Think of it as phantom limb... but for your visual system. Some patients have really disturbing hallucinations, some hallucinate things that don't make sense. For example, one patient reported that they just saw little people wearing crazy outfits walking everywhere around him... and sometimes they would just stare at him. Isn't that creepy?! One man reported that everywhere he saw bricks - and that when he looked at people their faces would be embedded in the bricks. Another more tame hallucination that was reported was that the patient was walking past a window and saw a reflection of blue moose in the window. The best treatment we currently have for these patients is to unfortunately reassure them that they aren't alone and recommend increasing their blink rate and make lighting around them brighter as it decreases the frequency or incidences of these hallucinations.
I think one of the main reasons I don't want to be a VR/LV optometrist is that there's much we can do for our patients, but nothing to help them get their vision back 100%. Being a VR/LV doctor is more about making the patient more comfortable with their condition and enhancing what they have left.
Personally, I think I prefer a scope that's more fast paced and results in greater outcomes, but I'm still exploring my options. Currently, I'm looking into cornea & contact lenses or ocular disease (like glaucoma management).
Anyways... back to studying.
- S
This is a journey of my life as an optometry studying in the United States. I'm currently just finishing my 2nd year and will be entering my 3rd year in less than a month. Just thought the journey might interesting to document - though I wish I would have started this sooner.
Currently, in less than 7 hours, I have my Vision Rehabilitation and Low Vision Exam. I'm approximately 60% through the material but it's been painfully slow to get through. The remaining 40% consists of about 4 hours of lecture. Don't worry this becomes the norm and stress levels prior to test taking decreases significantly and rapidly once in optometry school.
I've previously worked in low vision patient care as a vision mate prior to starting optometry school with some minor interest in it. After taking this course, I am fairly certain I do not want to become a low vision optometrist as I don't have the strong interest or patience that's required of it.
One cool conditions that I'm currently studying for this test is called Charles Bonnet Syndrome (CBS). Basically, for CBS patients is that they have an acquired vision loss to the point that there's not enough sensory (visual) information getting to the brain - and then the brain has a panic attack since it doesn't know what to show you as what you see. As a result it just makes things up and you hallucinating things. The interesting part is that these hallucinations are usually pretty crazy and non-sensical (is that a word?) and it scares a lot of patients into thinking that they are going crazy. Think of it as phantom limb... but for your visual system. Some patients have really disturbing hallucinations, some hallucinate things that don't make sense. For example, one patient reported that they just saw little people wearing crazy outfits walking everywhere around him... and sometimes they would just stare at him. Isn't that creepy?! One man reported that everywhere he saw bricks - and that when he looked at people their faces would be embedded in the bricks. Another more tame hallucination that was reported was that the patient was walking past a window and saw a reflection of blue moose in the window. The best treatment we currently have for these patients is to unfortunately reassure them that they aren't alone and recommend increasing their blink rate and make lighting around them brighter as it decreases the frequency or incidences of these hallucinations.
I think one of the main reasons I don't want to be a VR/LV optometrist is that there's much we can do for our patients, but nothing to help them get their vision back 100%. Being a VR/LV doctor is more about making the patient more comfortable with their condition and enhancing what they have left.
Personally, I think I prefer a scope that's more fast paced and results in greater outcomes, but I'm still exploring my options. Currently, I'm looking into cornea & contact lenses or ocular disease (like glaucoma management).
Anyways... back to studying.
- S
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