Thank goodness, the time has finally come where I don't have any lecture exams for this week. I still have one proficiency however, but it's on metal frame fitting, so I don't expect it to be that bad. This week is still pretty busy though - on Tuesday evening I will attend a telefund, where we call SCCO alumni and try to raise money for an organization (in my case, I'll be raising money for my class, the class of 2010). We get a $25 gift card from target and we are put in a raffle for prizes - the chances of winning is always pretty good too. Then on Wednesday I am organizing an Army optometry scholarship info night, where a health care recruiter will conduct a presentation and answer any questions regarding the Army Health Professions Scholarship Program (HPSP). Then on Friday I am leaving for Vegas! We are going to the Vision Expo which is basically a huge optometric expo/conference held every year at Las Vegas. I plan to see a Cirque du Soleil show called "Ka" later that evening, then the next day we are going to do some shopping in the nearby outlets. I'm going to have to manage my time like crazy because on the following Monday, it's back to two exams per week for the next three weeks!!!

This past week we were presented with our options for our BIO (Binocular Indirect Ophthalmoscope) purchase. This device is for peering through the pupil to check the health of the back of the eye. It allows the examiner to see the back of the eye in a larger perspective (vs. the slit lamp used with a condenser lens, which allows to see details). The BIO is best used when the patient's pupils are dilated...you probably remember being dilated in a past eye exam, then the doctor put on the BIO and shined a really bright light in your eye.

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This weekend was super busy for me!!! I attended the Omega Delta initiation banquet (the first years get initiated at this time), then we went to Bar 330 afterwards for some dancing. I attempted to study Saturday but that was unsuccessful! I had to go to my parent's house for a housewarming party. Now I have only have one day to finish the several pages of material for Ocular Physiology (which is coming up on Monday)!!! We'll see how it goes.

Oh yeah, and my exams this past week went well overall...the plastic frame fitting proficiency went particularly well; the way it works is you get a frame and a randomly selected "patient" to fit the frame on. It so happened that the frame I got didn't require any adjustment!!! Of course I had to inspect the fit and it looked good, so I went ahead and had it inspected and it was indeed a good fit! I was super lucky because all my other classmates had to get their frames adjusted to their patient.

This quarter is getting pretty challenging, but the more and more challenge, the more I feel like I'm becoming an optometrist now. First year was a lot of bookwork, but now we're learning a lot of procedures that we will be using as an optometrist. Well yeah just wanted to update you all real quick...sorry for the brief posts lately but I guess you can understand me...school is getting ridiculously busy!!!

For the next three weeks, I will be BUSY! This week I have two exams (Ophthalmic Optics II and Clinical Medicine II) and a plastic frame fitting proficiency. Basically, the proficiency involves getting a plastic (aka "Zyl") frame and fitting it to a patient under certain standards. To fit a plastic frame, one needs to heat the areas that need to be bent with a specially made heated salt/sand pan or heated air.

This is what a heated salt/sand pan looks like:

Source

(Sorry - I couldn't find a picture of a heated air blower)

If you don't use heat, you can crack or break the frame (it happened to me already!). Fitting a plastic frame may seem simple, but there's a bit of technique involved in it...you'll learn it as you go through optometry school if you haven't already. Hopefully the proficiency won't be that bad, but we'll see.

So the following two weeks after next week, I will continue to have two exams each week...the workload seems much like Spring quarter of my first year. It's definitely manageable but of course I would be much happier spending my time doing other things besides studying...oh well, that's optometry school for you...!

Last week was a somewhat slow week, but labs are starting so it was a little faster than the first week. A procedure I learned last week (and I actually learned this in Hawaii) was the cover test, which allows you to detect eye turns (tropias) and latent eye turns (phorias). An eye turn can be observed when the subject is looking with both eyes (binocularly), and a latent eye turn can be observed when the subject has one eye covered (monocularly). Then we learned how to neutralize the eye turn using a prism bar. This tool is used to show how much of an eye turn (i.e. how much of a "deviation") the patient has. Here is what it looks like:

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