2008.12.17 14:13:15

John McDaniel

#7…What Others Have to Say…

In the process of creating this list I asked a lot of other optometrists for their input.  At one point I even put a request on the optcom list for suggestions.  What I got in return was literally over one hundred responses.  Rather than sort through and try to pick out the best ones I’ve decided to share them all.  My favorite one is the last one – still makes me laugh when I think about it.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot…I’ve eliminated the names to protect the innocent.  Enjoy.

• Just got a call from a patient to make an appointment.  She calls back a few seconds after hanging up and asks if we can give her the number to the utility company.  Staff told her to call information, to which she replies "No they charge for that!"

• I love it whenever I tell a kid to open wider and the kid says... AHHHH... Always cracks the parents up. 
  

• How about how patients proceed to tell you how horrible their vision is, “it's gotten soooooo much worse”, yada, yada, yada - then you clarify "is this with your glasses or without?"  It's usually without their glasses!!!!  "So, how do you see with your glasses? "Oh- just fine!!!”

• I once had a patient tell me that nothing was wrong or had changed with his eyes, but he had been placing his eyeglasses on his television set when he wasn't using them and the television set had sucked all the power out of them.

• I once had a patient insist that we gave her 2 left trial contact lenses.  After the tech rechecked that packages and told her no, that she had a right and left one, she said “NO! It says right here on the package LIFT!”

• Doctor: "Patient, please look to the left."   Patient:  "With which eye?"

• There was a patient that was giving very confusing results until I figured out that he was telling me which was “badder.”

• One well-endowed female patient, when viewing her fundus photos on the computer monitor, said the photos 'looked like boobs'

• The first thing patients do when they put in a new pair of contacts is to cover one eye and then the other to compare...(and of course inevitably one eye is a little better than the other so they comment/complain....)....Now, patients NEVER do that with glasses.....

• Yesterday a patient told me that she had a terrible condition called "monovision" but it was OK, her last doctor had fit her with special "monovision contact lenses" and now she was OK.

• As I point to my left ear-- "Please look at my left ear."  Patient asks, "Is your left ear on the right or left?"
• Patients says “You look up my wife in the yellow pages, call her and ask her what my insurance is.”

• Last week I was doing phorias on a patient and I asked if the top line was to the right.  After a long silence I repeated “is the top line of letters to the right?”  Her response was "I can't tell which one is the top"

• You wouldn't believe the number of people who get all confused on BXC when I ask which is sharper and darker, the horizontal or vertical? I usually mention, "horizontal, just like the horizon..."  

• I had a professional pilot get horizontal and vertical mixed up.

• Doctor: "Which is higher... the one on the left, or the one on the right?"  Patient: "The top one."

• After doing BIO on a young boy, he commented with wide open eyes "I think I saw God!"

• Years ago when Alcon's enzyme first came out, it was a pork derivative. I worried if this would violate kosher laws and checked with a classmate who was an optometrist and a rabbi. He said it did not, but tell patients so they could decide for themselves. This worked well as I discussed this with every Jewish or Muslim patient. Finally, I had dispensed the enzyme to an Italian woman who came back yelling at me one week later. I said "What difference does it make"? She said "I am a vegetarian!"

•  Doctor: "Which is better, 1 or 2?” responses...
  • Patient: “Both”
  • Patient: “Well I can see 1 much better but 2 is clearer”
  • Patient: “O F L ...”
  • Patient: “no, that's worse”
  • Patient: “The other one...the one before. The first one, not the second one."
  • Patient: “Can I see it again?" "Can I see it once more?" "Can I see it just one more time?" "Just once more, can I see it once more?"

• Doctor: "Which is better, 5 or 6?”
  • Patient: “2, I liked 2 before."

• I ask a kid "so do things look pretty clear most of the time or are they blurry sometimes?"  The kid responds "they're kinda clear and kinda blurry."
• “My eyes are bleery...I think I rubbed all the medicine out of these, they need more medicine”
• I was on a mission trip in Mexico several years ago and my translator was busy explaining something to one patient while I examined the next.  My Spanish isn't great but I went ahead and tried to explain to that patient to use artificial tears OU qid but accidentally said gato (cat) instead of gota (drop).  The patient was somewhere between alarmed and amused that I was asking her to put a cat into her eye four times daily.
• One of my favorite chief complaints was from a patient who knew that his "bifocular" vision was off. It was!
• Many times during the BCC, I ask, "which lines appear darkest or clearest, up and down or back and forth?" The patient will respond, "the green lines do!"
• "My prescription is getting blurry....I think I must need more axis" ....and to think I was going to just chalk it up to an itchy macula.
• How about patients who take their glasses off before entrance acuity and than have to dig through their purse for five minutes to find them again before the exam can start?
• Q. Do you have any health problems?
  A. No, I'm real healthy.
  Q.  So you don't take any medication?
  A.  No, well, except for the chemotherapy.
• Doctor: “Read the bottom line.”  Patient: “You mean the bottom, bottom?”
• Doctor: “Read the bottom line.”  Patient: “Do you want me to read it?”
• “I really can’t see – I wrote down that it is the 11^th today, right?  See, I can’t see – today is the 12^th!”  That certainly explains everything.
• Doctor: “any history of any problems with either eye?” 
  • Patient: “I was told I had a torn rectum”
  • Patient: “I have Cadillac’s in my eyes”
  • Patient: “I have the stigmatism – is that fatal?”

And my personal favorite for the last one…

• I had an 80+ year old lady in the office once who was convinced that her macular hole was somehow linked to a hole in her head.  She insisted that I feel her scalp where there was indeed a small divot.  Following the 8:30 am exam she asked me if I would like to join her for a beer and then gave me a piece a candy that she took out of the candy bowl at our front desk.

Le meas,

John G. McDaniel, OD, MLHR
President/Founder
Waugoo Consulting Group, LLC
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