Nilit and I have been in Phoenix for a couple weeks now! We've
been able to enjoy some quality time with friends and family, and get
some last minute things taken care of before we leave for our trip. Unite for Sight
(the program we're volunteering for in India) requires that all volunteers shadow an eye
doctor in our home country for at least two days. After finishing some
online training and learning more about eye anatomy and diseases, we
were on the hunt to find a local eye doctor willing to help us out.
Luckily, my mom's eye doctor allowed us to shadow him and other docs in
his office. They scheduled us to be there for two days.
We showed up on the first day early, prepared, and excited. We are both certifiable nerds that way. It went like this pretty often:
Doc: This is the test we do because this is how the anatomy is and this is how this disease works.
Me or Nilit, or both in unison: OOh, wow! That is SOO cool! So how come.....And why can't you...and what if....I bet you could design something that...
Yup, nerds.
The docs were all kind enough to answer our numerous and silly questions patiently. They even allowed us to practice on their equipment, and used "teaching mirrors" when doing retinal exams so that we could see what they could see.
I think that part of our enthusiasm to learn this all well stems from just making sure we can actually be useful when we're in India. We aren't doctors or nurses, and the very last thing we want is to do is get in people's ways or create more work than help. The more we know before we get there, the better off everyone will be - especially the patients. We are excited about that.
The problem for me will be that by the time we are leaving for India, all the knowledge will be two months old and most of it replaced with broken Spanish and bicycle machine know-how from Maya Pedal. Not a bad problem to have, but I did bring my notes from shadowing to give myself a refresher before we finally get there :)
We are actually headed to Guatemala right now - Literally about to board the plane as I type this. I'll leave all of that for another post. I'll just put it this way:
We. are. stoked.
See you all in Guatemala.
We showed up on the first day early, prepared, and excited. We are both certifiable nerds that way. It went like this pretty often:
Doc: This is the test we do because this is how the anatomy is and this is how this disease works.
Me or Nilit, or both in unison: OOh, wow! That is SOO cool! So how come.....And why can't you...and what if....I bet you could design something that...
Yup, nerds.
The docs were all kind enough to answer our numerous and silly questions patiently. They even allowed us to practice on their equipment, and used "teaching mirrors" when doing retinal exams so that we could see what they could see.
 |
| Nilit practicing his slit lamp/biomicroscope skills. The docs make this look easy! |
 |
| A tad hard to see, but the red light is the patient's retina. It's being reflected from the opthalmascope sitting on the doctor's head. That is what she sees through the device. |
I think that part of our enthusiasm to learn this all well stems from just making sure we can actually be useful when we're in India. We aren't doctors or nurses, and the very last thing we want is to do is get in people's ways or create more work than help. The more we know before we get there, the better off everyone will be - especially the patients. We are excited about that.
The problem for me will be that by the time we are leaving for India, all the knowledge will be two months old and most of it replaced with broken Spanish and bicycle machine know-how from Maya Pedal. Not a bad problem to have, but I did bring my notes from shadowing to give myself a refresher before we finally get there :)
We are actually headed to Guatemala right now - Literally about to board the plane as I type this. I'll leave all of that for another post. I'll just put it this way:
We. are. stoked.
See you all in Guatemala.
No comments:
Post a Comment