Saturday, November 10, 2007

thanks for all the comments on ENT! i haven't decided if i'm going to do it, but it's definitely one of my top few choices. :)

after being assured by the rest of my cohort who had already sat for the opthalmology posting exams that it was as easy as pie, i went into the exam room, well, not very prepared. a gross understatement.

as it stands, i managed to completely fluff 2 slides out of 10, and mess up quite a bit of the rest. hopefully i'll scrape a pass!

this is a severe reminder that "easy as pie" is only true IF you have studied. i really really do need to remind myself that not everyone takes things so lightly. and i neither should i, really.

i realise that eye surgery freaks me out. as in, REALLY freaks me out. i can't stand the thought of anything touching my eye besides my contact lens!
i don't know how the glaucoma patients do it, when they have their IOP measured with applanation tonometry. how can they sit there passively and let the probe touch their eye? me, i'd bolt.
we had our IOPs measured, and it took me 8 tries to finally open my left eye enough as they fired air jets into it. OWWWW. that was freaky enough!!!! thankfully, i don't have glaucoma.


and eye surgery is way cool, but also way freaky. the thought of cutting an eyeball? just a NO-NO. cutting some's abdomen, yes. cutting someone's head, yes. nose, yes, throat yes, legs and hands, yes. basically, anywhere besides the eye = yes.

to be awake as the surgeon gives a retro-bulbar anaesthetic to numb your eye? OWWWW. i almost freaked out.

and worst: to be able to see the scalpel coming to your eye whilst you have stitches removed in clinics on follow-up? MAJORLY FREAKY.

patients definitely have more courage than me. i guess if you really need to, you summon up the courage from somewhere. but oh please, dear God, don't let me be the one needing eye surgery now. call me a wuss, but oh, really! i can't stand anything touching my eye!



corneal transplant


then again, being me, i still do want to have LASIK. ahhhh, the price of being vain!

but opthalmology is OVER! and now, for ENT!



3 comments:

jysika said...

I'm sorry, what's ENT?

I'm sorry that you didn't do as well as you would have liked to do. That seems to be the feeling that I know all too well now :(

AHHH! I cannot stand anyone or anything touching my eye. Like eye liner? No freaking way. It's taken me months to be able to apply mascara without freaking out.

I had air jets shot into my eye and it took several tries. I just couldn't do it. I kept pulling back. They were honestly going to get someone to hold my head next to the machine. :(

And then eye drops. Nope, nada. My eye doctor himself, said that I had the fastest blinking reflex he had ever seen.

Anonymous said...

Otolaryngology, head and neck surgery as we know it!

AS long as you know that ENT surgeons have to come very close to the eye... so if someone has pus in their orbit, an ENT surgeon operates. If they have Graves disease and protruding eyes, it's an ENT operation they get to treat it. If they have a tumour of their sinuses, it's an ENT surgeon who lifts off their face and takes out the bone covering the eyeball. If they have a teary eye, it's an ENT surgeon who re-cannulates the tear duct.

However, none of this actually involves cutting into an eyeball, just the tissues around it.

So you should be okay :)

ditzydoctor said...

jessica: thank you! :) and really, the air-jets rate up there along with oesophageal manometry as some of the most uncomfortable things ever. eeks. i hope you're doing well!!!!

anon: well yes, anything BUT the eye. although what you've described sounds pretty gross, it also sounds altogether more bearable. imagine sitting there placidly and letting someone poke something into your eye!!!!!