An "ophthalmic and optometric" experience

[Warning : this is a potentially medically boring blog....]

Now we know what the optometrists were doing all this while....LOL

They deceived the eye with an "eye candy", not realistically but physically to make it a better navigator.

Today the class was devoted to "Methods of optical examination". We were dying to touch the apparatuses since the first day (not all yet).

We were brought into a very dark room with black-painted walls to be shot into the head by light rays emitted by lamps, metaphorically exaggerated.

In short, there were shiny lamps in a very dark room.

First thing first was the examination of the visual acuity. In English, it's an examination of the eye sharpness "and" see how sharp you can penetrate through one's body (ignore the latter phrase after "and").

Ka Keat was the first to test his eyesight by looking at the Snellen Chart which looked something like this :

This is very familiar to those who have glasses.

Then he put on the phoropter (optical refractor) with corrective lenses to find out his degree of visual acuity. No lens was suitable for him, so teacher suggested "astigmatism/散光" on him.

Ka Keat with his signature look with little eyes.

This teacher speaks very perfect English *love love*

A set of corrective lenses.

The yellowishy "plus" lenses for hyperopia (longsightedness).

An optically very old optical refractor(phoropter) for correction.

Then we proceeded to measuring the length of eye projection out of the eyesocket called exophthalmetry by means of an exophthalmeter.

exo- : go out

opthalo- : eye

-metry : measurement

I looked like a freakin' 5 year-old kid, ngengengenge....

He was violating my eyes and for crying out loud I was in pain, xD.

Rose performing ophthalmetry on Nantha.

Me examining the protrusion of his eyes excitedly, ngehehehe.

After that, Nantha's left eye was dropped with mydriatic cycloeplegic instillation to paralyse the ciliary muscles of the eye, resulting in a very widely dilated pupil.
The purpose of the dilation was to perform the fundoscopy on his eye. Situation wasn't really favorable as the teacher said that he has chronic conjunctivitis with photophobia. Plus, in a mydriatic eye, it's very painful when light is shone into the eye.

But in spite of the unfavorable condition, Nantha was very noble to let everyone of us to perform the fundoscopy on him. Fundoscopy isn't an easy task to perform and it requires experience. I wasn't very pro in performing fundoscopy and I was panicked because it was very uncomfortable to my best friend. But all in all, I saw what was supposed to be seen but I was ambivalent and skeptical.

Look closely and you'll see the left eye pupil (your right) is wider than

the right one (your left).

The right eye in close-up. Normal, undilated and reacted to light.

The left eye in close-up. Dilated and nonreactive to light.

It was a very fun class and we learnt alot in fact. Tomorrow's my turn for pupil dilation like what you've seen above. Hopefully this will help my classmates to understand better about ophthalmology. Just under one condition that Faiz won't violate my eyes coz that hurted much during exophthalmetry.....heeeeheeeeeheeeeee~~~

~Kochi~