Why I Became An Ophthalmologist...

In the first two years of Medical School we were taught many things about the human body from books and lectures.  For instance, sleep was no longer a necessity, we were advised by one charming faculty member.  You can train yourself to get by on five to six hours of sleep a night and he strongly recommended we do just that, or fall behind and risk flunking.  Always the obedient student,  I slept very little, studied very hard, and during final exams week slept only five hours the entire week for fear of not being promoted to the third year, when I would finally get some clinical training in the hospital with real patients.

My first clinical rotation assignment was Ob-Gyn.  For twelve weeks, Obstetrics and Gynecology would demand my constant attention.  Hospital rounds at 600am every day, including weekends, then to the OR or the clinic to be with my assigned team of attending physicians and student doctors at various levels of training.  Then home, usually by 700pm, to study materials on the diseases I had witnessed that day.  The physical and mental challenges of that rotation were my toughest yet.  Learning to speak to other doctors like a doctor, to organize my thoughts about a patient and her disease, and then present that information coherently while improving my very evident ineptness at  drawing blood, assisting in surgery and examining the human body was almost too much.  Women who are dying of cancer or having their babies by emergent C-sections do not make the best patients to practice on. 

One day in clinic my senior faculty doctor asked me whether I had done a pelvic exam before. “Yes, I have.” I replied confidently, not wanting to seem timid nor decline what was obviously a compliment and reward offered by a doctor who recognized my efforts so far.  I remembered the women in a previous class who had volunteered their bodies to me and my fellow students in small group sessions so we could experience our first exam under controlled conditions, and then gently critiqued our techniques, as we one by one put on our gloves and coated them generously with K-Y jelly.  “Too rough”, or “not serious enough” or “not thorough” were some of the comments offered to us in a very awkward review at the session’s end. "Yes, I have."  I repeated quietly, this time to reassure myself more than anyone else. 

Before entering the exam room,  I reviewed the patient’s chart. A 90 year old woman with a history of cervical cancer, who had much of her internal anatomy altered by surgery and radiation waited behind that door.  I would be trying to feel whether her cancer had returned.  Accompanied by a seasoned nurse chaperone complete with a slight smirk on her face, and with a stethoscope draped around my neck, my short–waisted white coat tightened as I knocked and entered.  I hoped she was too old to see the beads of sweat shining on my forehead.  “Mrs. Sims,” I announced loudly, “I am Dr. Branner, one of the student doctors, and I am here to do your pelvic exam”. 

Already draped and with her feet in the stirrups, she was in the ready position.  A cold, shiny, stainless steel tray beckoned me from the foot of her bed.  On it were the speculum, the gloves, the K-Y jelly and the various things I would need to perform my exam, competently arranged by my assistant.  “Have you ever done this before?”  Mrs. Sims mumbled.  “No ma’am, but I am about to give you the best one you have ever had”.

That was the day I decided to become an ophthalmologist.