Okay so here we go... first day of clinic.
The fun began before we even got to clinic. I was driving, and carpooling with two other girls, and we had the trunk full of our gear (each person had to bring a BIO and lens kit... both are not small ). When we were about 10 miles into our journey to Portland, cell phones in the car started ringing. Amanda, who was driving by herself, had a flat tire. Backup a second: the reason she was driving by herself is because she has to head straight to the airport after clinic to fly to Colorado and get married this weekend!!! Okay, so she's just outside of the Grove on the size of the road with a flatter-than-flat dead tire, so we head back to get her... we are already crunched for time to get to portland clinic, and so we hurry up and load her gear into the car including two HUGE suitcases. And even though my little honda is no SUV, we combined our jigsaw skills and fit everything in. We only got to clinic 20 minutes late... and our attending was very understanding. He's a really nice guy...
... and he's a such a nice, laid back guy, he didn't exactly tell us what we are supposed to do in our exam. What test do you want us to run on the patient? What should we throw out? When do we check with you? What do we do if our patient has 12 different medications, a 20 degree head-tilt and a difficult refraction? Yep, that's what we got.... and in retrospect it was that much of a difficult patient. But at the time, I was freaking out. I was the one doing the exam and my partner was recording (we are paired up for the first semester... thank god), and I was stumped when things didn't go as I expected. So anyway, after freaking out and running to my attending, he said to bail out on JCC and just go with what's in her existing glasses. WHAT? okay... they never told us that in class. So anyway, although we didn't get to the dilation (we told the patient to come back, but I'm sure we'll never see them again...) I have to say that I learned a lot. Primarily, clinic is NOT anything like we've learned in class, and you have to make up the rules as you go along. Next week we have two patients (that's what we call 'booked full', since each exam is scheduled for two hours), and I hope that I can at least get one full exam done. Clinic is exhausting! But such a wonderful challenge. I am grateful to all the patients who are going to put up with our long and tedious exams this summer... thank you, ahead of time.
So, we got our patient out the door with a prescription that i think might actually work (trial framing went well!). And now, back to Amanda... she had a flight leaving from PDX at 8, and it was already 6:15... after doing the math with the MAX train, we figured out that she wouldn't make it unless we drove her. So, off to the airport! Thankfully, there wasn't very much traffic and I'm pretty sure that she made her flight. Shea rode with me to and from the airport (thank you!), so it really wasn't that bad... just a very very long day. By the time I got home, all I could do was frantically grab some food (going on 8 hours not eating), grab a beer and watch tv to let my brain unwind.
All I can say is, I really hope next week goes a little smoother... then again, you have no idea what the patient is going to present with in clinic, and you have to be ready for anything.. including being run ragged and stumped and embarassed and overwhelmed... it runs the gammet. I just can't wait to get better at it.
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