I know I said in an earlier post that I look forward to development lab with all the adorable children every week, but it’s actually tough to pick a favorite between that and our contacts lab.
I LOVE labs with Dr. Gunderson, someone you’ll familiarize yourself with in second year since he also teaches ocular physiology. If you haven’t met him yet, you’ll learn soon after you meet him that this man has the most interesting (and hilarious) stories any faculty member has ever told. I don’t know about you, but good humor makes me learn better. If it doesn’t, it at least certainly makes my day better.
I’ve worn contact lenses since I was in seventh grade. When I first learned to handle contacts, it took me two hours to put them in and at least 45 minutes to take them out. It took me about a whole month to get better at it. Now that I’ve had so much first-hand experience, it’s interesting to learn what exactly I’m putting in my eye, and what my optometrist has been doing all this time when she says she’s “checking” them. It’s also a really weird (in a good way) having to insert and remove contacts in our partner’s eye, and having them do the same on me. But you’ll get used to having your eyeballs get poked around, the same way you got used to monocular vision from all those dilations in second year. It’s not as bad as it sounds, I swear. It really doesn’t hurt. Unless you put them in inside out.
Every week, we get a sample of a contact lens solution to take home to try. If you don’t wear contacts, you still get to take a sample home to read, so you can familiarize yourself with products on the market. This is so that we don’t give our patients the dumbfounded look when they ask us about solutions.
Here are some solutions I’ve collected so far:
I might not need to buy solution for a the rest of the year if this keeps up.
Last week we had a special day in contact lens lab, because we all got to try color contacts! We had plenty of colors to choose from, from subtle color enhancers (like those that make natural blue eyes a brighter shade of blue) to purple and gray lenses. We got to try the color spectrum from different lines, like FreshLook and Expressions Colors.
Some looked natural, some looked a little spooky, but overall, it was all fun and exciting. Since I have dark colored eyes, I tried on the lightest colors of the trial lens spectrum (blue and sterling gray).
I’e never really looked that closely at the lenses to see what they look like under a biomicroscope (also known as the slit lamp). The splotchy mix of colors under high magnification looks like part of a Jackson Pollock painting.
So there you have it folks, labs are the definitely on the top of the list of things to look forward to in summer quarter of third year!