because if i do this, i think i might remember better. ((((YOU DO NOT HAVE TO READ ALL OF THIS THIS IS LITERALLY JUST ME FORCING MYSELF TO BE ACCOUNTABLE FOR STUDYING LOL BYE))))
okay so COUCHING.
i had to look this up, it's so weird - it's an early from of cataract surgery. so NOW, for modern day cataract surgery, you take out the hardened crystalline lens and put in a synthetic lens (which is super cool to see on a retinal image btw, the artificial lens has like a blueish-purpleish hue/halo around it, it’s super neat), but i guess back before modern medicine, they would literally just. move the lens out of the line of sight. CLOUDING GONE TA DA U CAN SEE kind of i guess?? some lower developed countries still use this. i think that's super fascinating. literally that patrick meme lol
so glad i took the time to make that ANYWAYS
CUPPED DISC this i use every day at work, disc cupping. basically the depression of the ocular disc in the retina due to intraoccular pressures. there is Some disc cupping in everybody, that's what a cup/disc ratio is, basically the diameter of the ocular disc divided by the cupping on the disc. a normal ratio is between like. 0.1-0.5 or somewhere around there i guess— once you start getting wild numbers you start to get concerned about glaucoma and other degenerative diseases. mine is 0.2, i don't know why i remember this but i do. c/d ratios are super (omg it's snowing outside that's so fun. or i guess this is sleet i'm seeing. less fun) subjective though, you could get 100 glaucoma experts in a room and have them look at an ocular disc and you'd get 100 different c/d ratios. there is a proper way to measure it but that's getting like super specific and not super necessary in most cases. the doctor at my work will ask me what i think some c/d ratios are, not bc i'm capable of making diagnoses bc Legally i am not, but moreso because wants me to understand what i'm looking for when we talk about cup/disc ratios. he's super supportive of me going into optometry. he's kind of my biggest cheerleader in that, and he gasses me up CONSTANTLY, which is good bc flattery gets you Everywhere with me lol. oh also, the optic disc is where your optic nerve is, which is directly connected to the brain which is what is receiving visual cues and transmitting them to the brain. COOL AWESOME SO WHEN I TAKE A PICTURE OF UR EYE I CAN SEE LITERALLY A PART OF YOUR BRAIN, LIKE HOW IS THAT NOT SO FUCKING COOL
CYCLOPLEGIC DRUGS, ANOTHER THING I DEAL WITH EVERY DAY, tropicamide is a cycloplegic drug. tropicamide is what we use to dilate the pupil for a dilated fundus exam. the stingy drops they put in the eye to make ur pupil big basically. i always feel so bad every time i had to dilate somebody LOL I KNOW IT SUCKS ASS BUT IT'S NECESSARY SOMETIME IT'S FOR UR HEALTH UUUUUGH. also apparently "mydriasis" is the term for dilation of the pupil. the more u know.
a lot of this is ophthalmic, which. i would hate to be an ophthalmologist. optometry is more than enough for me, i don't wanna be giving people shots in their eyeballs that would freak me out too badly i think. needles don't scare me but shit like that freaks me out, the thought of sticking someone with a needle gives me anxiety. my hands shake so bad i would like gouge their eye out on accident somehow i just know it.
getting into color deficiency now- my father was color blind! he was a tritanope, blind to "cool tones"- things like blue, green, so on and so forth.. my brother is Also a tritanope, he got it from our father. thankfully **I** am not color blind, that would suck ass seeing as i love doing fun colors for my hair and eyebrows lol. actually, this is the one thing i will give my father, he was a Scary intelligent man. he worked in heating and air conditioning, and with his color deficiency Obviously it made it difficult on him what with colored wires and such, so he would memorize manuals for all of the different appliances he worked on and would do repairs that way instead of relying on the colors of the wires. which actually is pretty ingenious. my parents both were scary smart, i think i got my intelligence from my mom personally. not calling myself smart or anything, cuz i'm really not That smart, i'm just passionate. my mom was kind of the same way i am, had to know every little thing about anything that caught her interest lol. i'm definitely my mother's child 100000000%, we're like twins in personality and looks.. personality being why we butted heads so often when i was growing up lol. we were too similar and we got on each other's nerves LOL. love her to death though. miss her every single second of every day.
DIPLOPIA another thing i deal with often at work. diplopia is the medical term for double vision. dependant on the cause of the diplopia, you would correct this using a prism in the lens of the glasses. prism.. confounds me LOL BUT I'M GONNA NEED TO LEARN AND FAST cuz that's a major part of the ABO for opticianry. to quote the doctor i work for, i'm not "joe prism", i really don't understand it well. i get the general gist of it, but i'm gonna have to dive deeper for my licensing exams.
sar and i are putting our brain power together for this- sar (TBFC member) is an occupational therapy major (goin for her masters she slays so fucking hard congratulate her she's so fuckin cool), and i had the terms "luxate" and "subluxate" come up in vocab so i asked her what the difference is LMFAO. luxate is a full dislocation, subluxate is a partial dislocation, in case u were curious. in OT obviously it's about joints (shoulder most commonly, according to sar), for me it's the crystalline lens of the eye, which can become dislocated from it's normal position. i won't share pictures cuz i feel like it might creep people out but it's super fascinating to look at. "ectopia lentis" is the term apparently. AGAIN I DON'T NEED TO KNOW THAT MUCH BUT I H A VE TO KNOW LOL WHY AM I SO OBSESSIVE ABOUT EVERYTHING
this is giving me the definition of a drug, THAT'S THE THING WITH SOME OF THIS VOCAB it's stuff that like, in context i Know what it is, like everybody knows what a drug is, but if you asked me to define it i'd be like "... idk it's a fuckin drug what do u want from me" LMAO. well now i know i guess. the definition of drug is "a chemical agent intended for the diagnosis and treatment of a disease". the more you know *cue the rainbow*.
oh my god DUCTION I AM NEVER GOING TO REMEMBER THIS SHIT, IT CONFUSED ME IN MY CERTIFICATION EXAMS AND IT IS GOING TO CONFUSE ME NOW SON OF A BITCH okay so. duction is the movement of the eye using the extraoccular muscles AND I WILL NEVER EVER REMEMBER WHICH IS WHICH the doctor drew me a little diagram to help me remember (which i still have somewhere in my room i think.) OKAY SO
INFRADUCTION: downward movement
ADDUCTION: inward rotation
ABDUCTION: outward rotation
SUPRADUCTION: upward movement
i mix them up ALL THE FUCKIN TIME i need to beat it into my skull cuz jesus christ. i need to remember which muscle is which too which is completely gone from my brain at this point.
which also relates to the extraocular muscles of the eye, which i will never ever remember which are which (i will eventually it's just hard for me to remember), and they are as follows:
superior rectus: elevation of the eye, adduction, medial (inward) rotation
inferior rectus: depression of the eye, adduction, lateral (outward) rotation
medial rectus: adducts the eye
lateral rectus: abducts the eye
superior oblique: depresses, abducts, medial rotation
inferior oblique: elevates, abducts, lateral rotation
the obliques trip me up every single time bc logically they're opposites- superior being down and inferior being up. which makes my brain bleed every time i try to think about it.
i've switched locations- i really don't like studying in my bedroom, the lighting isn't that great and i get distracted more easily but here we are. i literally Bought a desk with the intention of going back to school and needing an area to study at but.. LMAO. plus it's cold in here i don't get great heat in this part of the house. oh well, maybe the cold will keep me awake. that, and the coffee and adderall (THAT I AM PRESCRIBED BTW).
the term for a black eye is "ecchymosis". fun fact that i just learned.
EMMETROPIA i remember that from my cert exam. i remember because "emme" sounds like "emma" which is ME ! emmetropia, VERY BASICALLY, means there is no refractive error. so no need for glasses, light rays fall exactly where they should on the retina. i Envy everybody with emmetropia lmfao.
endophthalmitis- inflammation of the tissues of the internal structures of the eye. i'm kind of lucky to be honest, my mom was Very medically savvy. she did medical billing and coding as a career, she worked for a neurosurgeon, and she herself had a handful of chronic health conditions, so she knew a Lot of medical terminology. when i was taking my cert exam she helped me learn all the medical short hand i needed (pt=patient, sx=surgery, hx=history, c/c=chief complaint, so on and so forth there's like 9,000 of them lol). she also helped me remember a lot of these prefixes and suffixes, Such As the suffix -itis always meaning inflammation of something. example: i've had chronic tendonitis in my right ankle since i was about 11. tendonitis=inflammation of the tendon (i'm sure u don't need me to define that for you but still). shortly before she passed, she sat me down with my opt tech cert study guide and quizzed me for about an hour on medical shorthand. we did it kind of backwards though, i told her the shorthand, she defined it for me, and the she would turn around and ask me what they meant when we were done. i dunno, that's a sweet moment in my head. it was nice. she was So excited that i was doing all of this, she was Very Very insistent on me going back to school- she even offered to help me pay for it (which i declined - i have a Thing abt accepting money from people idk. i'm a very proud person). my company has an OD tuition reimbursement program, and when i told her about it she was like "EMMA, ABSOLUTELY DO THAT SHIT." (that's an exact quote from her). i wish she was still here to watch me doing all of this and help me study. maybe she is here and i just don't realize it. i'll keep her in my mind and heart while i do this, maybe it'll help me out.
OHHHHHH MOTHER FUCKER I'VE FOUND SOME PROBLEM CONDITIONS.
Ectropion: turning Out of the eyelid
Entropion: turning In of the eyelid
i literally had to go back and check because i thought those were the same word GDI I'M NEVER GONNA REMEMBER WHICH IS WHICH LOL FUCK ME. well no, okay, endo always means internal, so maybe that'll help me. like endoskeleton on an animatronic (not the real term btw, that was made up by fans of five nights at freddy's but still. the inner mechanisms of an animatronic are Just called a skeleton, or a frame).
ESOPHORIA AND EXOPHORIA okay thank god, more stuff i work with every day that i'm familiar with PHEW. basically a "phoria" is the tendency of the eye to drift a certain direction- esophoria is turning inward, exophoria is turning outward. everybody has a little bit of phoria, depending on the target of focus. at a target at or past optical infinity (which is 20 feet, btw. that's what the term "20/20" means, it means you see at 20 feet what a person with emmetropia sees at 20 feet. so "perfect vision" although you can be 20/20 while still having a small refractive error ANYWAYS), your eyes should be either paralell or slightly exophoric, and at a target at a near distance (about 11 mm) you should be slightly esophoric. that's what the cover test is for during a (comprehensive) eye exam. it's testing your "posturing", so the way your eyes position themselves when focused on a target. there are two cover tests (technically more but we just deal with the two), the distance cover test and the near cover test. my doctor usually just does a near cover test. most of the remote exam doctors i've worked with also mostly do a near cover test, i've had a couple ask for a distance cover test and then like. once i was asked to do both a distance and near cover test. IDK THAT WAS VERY LONG WINDED, TL;DR I KNOW ESO AND EXOPHORIA LOL THANK GOD. there's also eso and exo TROPIA- the difference being phoria is a tendency, where as tropia is a constant. for example, esotropia the eye is Always turned in (usually only affects one eye- "cross eyed"), where as esophoria it's incidental. with a cover test, basically, you have the pt focus on a target at close distance and cover one eye, and then quickly uncover the eye and note the movement. when one eye's line of focus is broken it will go into a state of rest, and when the line of sight is regained it will (or should) automatically turn slightly eso to regain focus on the close target.
.. i did kind of a shitty job explaining that BUT YOU GET THE POINT LOL. lemme see if maybe i can find a video that may be more helpful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf8DGL7WE8U
this is a distance cover test but you get the picture. you're looking for no movement in the uncovered eye- i always look for movement in the covered eye, but that's because... i'm not a doctor LMFAO. it also shows examples of eso and exotropia so extra interesting! (you absoultely do not have to actually watch that- in fact, i don't expect you to read Any of this, this letter is for my own gain. MOST of the time, except for that one time i told u i was doing this course lol, if i write something to you i can be like "oh yea, i mentioned that to kevin", so this is my study strategy for now LMFAOOOO).
esotropia and exotropia are also examples of strabismus ("lazy eye"). strabismus can Also present without any kind of tropia tho so "lazy eye" isn't a super amazing term for it.
also fun fact i have been doing this for like 5 hours now and have only gotten halfway thru the E's on this vocab. it's not that i'm getting distracted per se, i'm just taking my time and looking things up to get a better understanding of everything. which i guess is proper studying ???? it doesn't help that i've also been writing this letter at the same time LMFAO. ur a distraction ~
jesus christ one of my vocab words is "evisceration" LMFAO WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH OPTICIANRY.
man this is why i like studying at work better, i have some questions that i know the doctor would be able to answer in a way that i can understand. google is a great resource but the doctor at work explains things so well, and in a way that's simple enough for me to understand but also comprehensive and not leaving anything out. i think i'm bugging the shit out of him at this point tho LMFAO, i spent a lot of time studying at work yesterday between patients and i kept going to him with questions, so eventually he just handed me an optometry dictionary and was like "go nuts" LMAOOO. thankfully he's always happy to answer questions, i think he's just excited that there's someone on staff that actually gives a shit about this stuff. cuz most of the staff do Nawt care about the medical ins and outs of this job. which i don't blame them for at all, for them it's like. this is their job and they're not doctors, why should they know or care about this. but i think it's Very fascinating, and i want to know as much as i possibly can. i also feel like i owe it to the patients that come in, i want them to get a comprehensive exam, and the technician is the first person they see during the exam (think like an eye nurse), so i want to do right by them. even if some of them are complete and total dickheads, i still want to provide them with a good eye exam. that's the big thing with retail optometry though, they like OVERLOAD the schedule- there are some days we have almost 30 appointments in a day, and when you see that many people in a limited amount of time it's fairly difficult to give them like a Really good exam. but u gotta do it! the doctor and i have gotten into a pretty good rhythm with one another though, we work very well together for sure. finding the balance between being prompt and being thorough. it's taken me a bit to find that balance but i think i've gotten it down pretty well at this point. i dunno, everybody at work, including our district manager, gasses me up so clearly i must be doing something right LMFAO.
more similar words:
enophthalmos: abnormal inward displacement of the eyeball
exophthalmos: abnormal outward displacement of the eyeball
those are a bit easier, i know "exo" (not kpop) always means outward, so therefore the other one must mean inward LMFAO. THAT'S HOW I THINK IDK MY BRAIN IS WIRED WITH LIKE. TWIZZLERS AND SHIT. dumb bitch syndrome BUT IT WORKS
OH MY GOD KEVIN I'M INTAKING INFORMATION CAN U BELIEVE IT i got to the definition of "exotropia" (see above lol) and part of the definition is "templeward (so outward) turning of the eye so the foveal line of sight fails to intersect on the target of focus". and i MADE THE CONNECTION ALL BY MYSELF cus it doesn't define "foveal line of sight" and i was like "foveal.. well the fovea centralis is the part of the retina responsible for fine, central vision. so that must mean the foveal line of sight is your central vision right?" AND I WAS R I G H T granted i didn't know the specific degress (it's 1.5-2 degrees btw) BUT STILL LMAO I USED MY BRAIN LET'S GAUR
that's true btw (“that’s true” lol like i’m lying or smthn. can u imagine if i was just makin all this shit up), the fovea or fovea centralis is the depression in the middle of the macula, which is responsible for fine vision and central vision. you would see a breakdown of this central vision in macular degeneration. there's 2 types of macular degeneration (this has nothing to do w my studies i'm just flexing how much i already know)- dry and wet. dry is more common, it's when the cones in the macula start to break down, usually due to age (macular degeneration is usually called age-related macular degeneration, or AMD, but it's not always caused by old age alone). wet AMD ( i had to re-google this cuz i couldn't remember the specifics) is when abnormal blood cells form behind the retina, causing fluid and blood to leak into the macular area of the retina, damaging the macula and causing the vision loss. i also had to look this up cuz i always forget which one, BUT wet macular degeneration Does have a treatment that can be done- there is no treatment or cure for dry age related macular degeneration though. which is shitty, that the more common one has no treatment in existence but hey. the bitch of living.
ahhhh floaters. i love having to explain to people that 99.9% of the time floaters are totally and completely normal, and that almost everybody has them. so "floaters" are clumps of Cells and Other Such Debris that are floating around in the vitreous of your eye (the vitreous humor is this jelly like shit that makes your eyeball shaped like an eyeball). i like my floaters tbh, i like to watch them when i get bored at work LMFAO if i look at a screen i can see them squigglin around in my eye. the protein and such other debris ITSELF actually isn't what you're seeing, fun fact- it's the shadows that they cast onto your retina that you're able to see. as you get older your vitreous natually just starts to break down and you get clumps of debris that float around, it's Fine, you're not gonna go blind. SOMETIMES floaters can be indicative of some ocular diseases, but that's like. if they're in an insane excess and come on VERY suddenly. other than that ur fine i promise ur not gonna drop dead from floaters
that's one of the most common comments i get at work. that and "I HavE A S TigMATisM". like cool, so does 90% of the human population. actually, i just googled it, about 1 in 3 people on this good green earth have astigmatism. so ur not special LMFAO 99.9% OF THE TIME I CAN ASSUME U HAVE AN ASTIGMATISM.
I N C A S E U D O N T K N O W T H E D E F I N I T I O N O F A S T I G M A T I S M (lemme actually flex my knowledge), astigmatism is a refractive error in which, instead of light rays falling on One point on the retina, they split up and fall on Two separate points on the retina, causing blurred vision and other such problems. it's due to the shape of your cornea- the best way i can describe it is, a non-astigmatic cornea is shaped like a circle, whereas an astigmatic cornea is shaped kinda like a football (with varying degrees of severity). it's just a Not perfectly spherical cornea. most everybody on planet earth has astigmatism, and if you don't, then i Hate you for being perfect. my astigmatism actually is not bad, my toric correction is like. -.75 -.50 (right and left, respectively). which is not bad at all. i get some people that have like -3.50 toric correction, which is an INSANE amount of astigmatism.
anyhow.
oh FUSION, actually this is a super interesting thing that a lot of people don't know- both of your eyes see independently, and they both form separate images. there's a process called "fusion" that happens, where the brain takes the two separate images being provided by the two independent eyes, and fuses them together to create the single image that you perceive. IT'S REALLY FUCKING COOL AND AMAZING THAT UR BRAIN CAN DO THAT that's also what causes fusion disorders such as binocular fusion disorder, which is a kind of offshoot of the kind of binocular instability that i have. it can also cause diplopia
the doctor told me that binocular instability is sort of a "garbage can term", in his words. it basically means something's fucky, and there's abt 50,000 different variations of some kind of binocular instability. mine specifically is accommodative infacility, which, as i mentioned in one of my previous letters, is pretty much the exact Opposite of presbyopia. instead of a lack of acommodation, i have TOOOOOOOOO much acommodation, meaning i'm constantly straining my eyes for no good god damn reason. i've been assured that it's not me actively being over dramatic though, and that it's a genuine spasm of the ciliary muscles that i cannot control. that also contributes to my accommodative spasm, which means it takes me a long time to go from a point of focus at a near distance to a point of focus at a far distance. my eye muscles just take a while to snap into place when i go from looking at something close up to looking at something far away. and they spasm a little, so when i'm reading for a while and then i like, look out the window or smthn my eye muscles basically go "... WAITFUCKSHIT-" and freak out for a second before i can bring the distance into focus. it's So much worse without my glasses on, but even with correction it's still pretty bad.
ANYWAYS I'M GETTING SIDE TRACKED FUCK
here i go again, i got to the definition of glaucoma and now i have to go look up ALL of the different forms of glaucoma. which there are quite a few of btw, i never knew that before i started working in optics.
pigmentary glaucoma! that's an interesting form that i've never heard of! basically parts of the pigment of the iris can fleck off and block the drainage duct in the eye, causing elevated intraocular pressures! pretty neat! (side note- i've been spelling "ocular" incorrectly on and off this whole time but i am not about to go back and correct all of that. just know i'm aware and i do it all the time LOL I'LL NEVER LEARN).
also the drainage duct in the eye that drains out fluid (in relation to glaucoma) is called schlemm's canal, which is a Very funny word.
ok now that i'm done researching and noting every single type of glaucoma that's ever existed. back to the matter at hand.why am i like this please save me from myself i'm dying out here ((((what would you trade the pain for???? I'M NOT SURE))))
hemorrhage is another word that i am just never ever going to spell correctly. i always thought i was a great speller, but i'm very quickly finding out that i am, in fact, Not a great speller after all. i'm actually kind of dogshit at spelling. my mom is in the afterlife killing me with her mind. as i mentioned she was a Very VERY smart woman- very fond of grammar and spelling, and gave me shit when i would ask how to spell something and forced me to sound it out. which, in retrospect, was her being an amazing mother and teacher but at the time it just annoyed me LMAO.
hemianopsia: loss of half the visual field in one or both eyes. that's actually very very useful to know, i'll have to really dig that one into the asscracks of my brain.
hemophthalmia will also be really useful at work (hemorrhage within the eye). we get that in some patients.
oh son of a bitch now ur on bubble LOL STOP DISTRACTING ME i would like to get through all of my vocab today so i can focus on Other shit instead of a bunch of definitions, but idk if i'll get this done today. EUGH i'm so BAD AT STUDYING THIS SUUUUUUUUUCKS WHY AM I DOING THIS (because i'm passionate and i think this is cool).
ok u left bubble before i could say this but a stye (relevant to you mr. gets styes all the time) is called a hordeolum, and it affects the moll or the zeiss gland of the eyelid. i also just looked it up and it is caused by staph bacteria, which is insane that i never knew that because i am a god damn LEADING expert in staph infections, seeing as i lived thru a pretty gnarly one in 2012 (it's a really long story, remind me to tell you abt it sometime- i almost died it was pretty cool, and i was quarantined for like 2 weeks which was super swag and awesome).
ANOTHER THING I ALREADY KNEW-HYPEREMIA, COMMONLY KNOWN AS "RED EYE", CONGESTION OF BLOOD VESSELS IN THE EYE. AND IT'S WHY YOU SHOULDN'T USE ANTI RED EYE DROPS LIKE VISINE AND SHIT CUZ THAT CAN CAUSE REFLEX HYPEREMIA WHICH WILL END UP MAKING YOUR EYE EVEN MORE RED THAN IT ORIGINALLY WAS. IF U HAVE RED EYE JUST SUCK IT UP OR JUST USE ARTIFICIAL TEARS THAT'LL WORK JUST FINE JUST DON'T USE VISINE FOR THE ABSOLUTE LOVE OF GOD YOU'LL MAKE YOUR LIFE SO DIFFICULT
oh, another super fucking useful one-
hyphemia- bleeding in the anterior chamber of the eye. (a burst blood vessel in ur eye. everyone's burst a blood vessel at some point i'm sure u know what i'm talking about). we get that a lot at work too that'll be really useful to know the term for
this is also different from hemophthalmia. hemophthalmia is bleeding within the eye itself, whereas hyphemia is bleeding on the surface of the eye only. i can assure you i will fuck these up at least 10 times.
you know, all of these vocab words may not be necessary for me to know for the ABO and the NCLE specifically, but it'll be like SO fucking useful for me in the future to already be familiar with all of this stuff if i end up really wanting to go for a doctorate. kind of getting a head start in a way. like. i don't need to know what an iridectomy is to be an optician (it's the surgical removal of a segment of the iris btw). but it'll be useful for me to be at the very least FAMILIAR with what that is for a doctorate program. so that's cool, i Guess?? part of me feels like i'm wasting precious time doing this cuz i'm on a very mild time crunch with this (have to take my first final exam within 180 days or i'm dropped from the program), but honestly 180 days is a long ass time if u think about it. especially if i keep Up with my studies, which i'm being held accountable for by my coworkers (god bless them). so i've got time to fuck around and learn a bunch of medical terms i guess.
prefix "iri-" always means in relation to the iris, prefix "kera-" always means in relation to the cornea
keratitis sicca is the medical term for dry eye. fun fact
OKAY. I AM GOING TO TAKE A BREAK. SO I WILL END THIS HERE FINALLY FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. good BYE
~emma-elayne
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