Day 3

On Wed., Mar. 22, I was introduced to the clinical setting. Dr. Snyder showed me around the area, explaining the set-up.

“The day after being in the operating room is always really busy. I always have my patients with cataracts come for post-op[erations] the day after surgery to evaluate eye pressure and make sure the lens¹ is in perfect position.

“Then, they usually follow up at the month marker and the year marker,” Snyder said.

The day was filled with post-operation visits. The main issue to look for was eye pressure, which should normally be between 12 and 22 millimeters of Mercury (mmHg).

For patients with higher eye pressure, Dr. Snyder prescribed them with eye drops to help lower the pressure.

What I admired most about Dr. Snyder was his ability to adjust his behavior in order to better suit the patient, just as he did in the operating room. He knew when to joke with the patient and when to be serious.

“I don’t like mascara. You know why? Because mascara looks icky under a microscope,” Snyder told one of his patients.

Throughout the day, Dr. Snyder would allow me to look through the microscope at various things he wanted me to see – from microscopic debris on the iris to individual red and white blood cells.

“Did you know that the eye is the only place in the entire human body where you can see individual blood cells?” Snyder asked me.

He even let me look at a patient’s eye as he talked me through how to move and adjust the microscope to get a better view of the lens.

The clinic was a definite contrast to the operating room. There was quite a bit of moving around through all the rooms, but I enjoyed meeting all the patients whom I had seen the day before. It was fun learning about new people.

“What I love about being in my career is that I can see the impact I make on people’s lives.

“I love the operating room, but the clinic allows me to follow the patient beyond the surgery and see how they are doing,” Snyder said.

  ¹A lens is a transparent structure behind the iris that helps focus light for vision.