Thursday #47 – for something different, this week I woke up
in my own house and headed off to uni after my not-so-usual-anymore
weetbix. The Italian and I were
scheduled on for colour vision clinic and were expecting just another standard
day of red-green colour problems.
When My Twin Chinese Horoscope Supervisor came to debrief
us, there was some scepticism (mostly from the supervisor herself) over whether
our patient would actually have the blue-yellow colour vision problem he had
been referred for. Short Skirt Short
Jacket and The Quiet One had initially tried to claim this patient on the basis
that they hadn’t yet had a patient who wanted to join the police, but when he
suddenly became more interesting My TCH Supervisor opened it up for us to fight
over who got to see him. With everyone
being too polite to say anything I snapped him up and we went about our
testing, doing everything monocularly and taking twice as long.
As the results started to indicate a tritan deficiency we
got a little excited (in a nerdy kind of way) and My TCH Supervisor started
making calls about what to do next. Despite
the fact that we had already been told he possibly had a tritan defect and all
we did was run some subjective tests; it somehow felt like The Italian and I
had made an amazing discovery. Things were
going well in clinic and we were on a bit of a high when it came time to see
our next patient. A slightly more boring
deuteranope, we had done our testing in record time and were ready to pat
ourselves on the back when My TCH Supervisor announced that I would have to
explain the patient’s condition to him.
It should have been easy, and it was, until I got up to the
bit where I had to name colours and I froze.
Surely I can blame The Farge’s colour vision problem for my own
inability to describe colours? My TCH Supervisor
jumped in and all was well until the patient left and she asked if I knew why
she had asked me to explain. This led to
a conversation about my confidence (or lack thereof) and a light-hearted
comment that my only problem is me…which inevitably led to tears. I tried super hard to keep them in but I think
The Italian knew they were coming. My
TCH Supervisor (presumably unaware of how embarrassingly frequent these clinic
breakdowns are) escorted me out of clinic, holding my hand, and went for a walk
in the sun trying to make me feel better.
Having to discuss all the things in optometry that I’m worried about
passing did nothing to help my confidence battle…her suggestions of adding to
Malibu to Hot Chocolate may just do the trick though.
After a strange morning of highs and lows I headed back
home. I had some lunch, changed my
hairdo, put on some make up and switched my shoes so that by the time I returned
to uni that afternoon for contact lens clinic it felt well and truly like a
different day. With The Plural Confuser
as my supervisor it wasn’t looking like I was going to get out of clinic early
that night. As is often the case with
The Plural Confuser, I left that clinic not really knowing if I had gone well
or terribly…just part of the fun of optometry at UNSW.
When we headed home, M-Dizzle and I were in agreement that
pizza was the way to go for dinner. I justified
it with the “I’ve had one of those days” and M-Dizzle just ordered without the
justification. Some Mediterranean Lamb
and a phone call from DTM later I decided to call it a night.
For a Thursday which had started so promisingly it certainly
didn’t end up as one of my best. On the
nerdy bright side, The Italian and I are the only students to have seen a
tritanope in clinic and unlike My TCH Supervisor, we didn’t have to spend 20
years in colour vision clinic to see one.
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