Today, I caught a glimpse of a mouse scuttling across the floor in clinic. This was the second I’ve seen (or was it the same one?) since starting my rotation at the VA Eye Clinic. Being away from my home institution has opened my eyes to the world of community ophthalmology. Here, patients are complex, confused, cantankarous, and cataractous. The clinic is run by a small staff, all of whom assume multiple roles. I, for example, am an ophthalmologist-general practitioner-technician-optician-secretary. In the past 2 weeks, I’ve learned tricks like using a needle driver to remove corneal sutures when there’re no jewelers forceps, or how to hit things a certain way to get them to work – the stapler, the printer cartridge, the indirect ophthalmoscope. The perk is being able to take call from home, which until last week had been a foreign concept to me. It gave me the chance to attend a Bat Mitzvah (the female version of a Bar Mitzvah) for the very first time – surprising since I grew up in Brooklyn. It would have been more interesting if we had known Hebrew, but the dinner party was pretty posh. Nevertheless, we opted for Indian food for a friend’s birthday before joining the celebration and dancing.

I’m not sure what I was thinking when I chose to cover the ED at Mass Eye & Ear on Halloween weekend. While heading home last Friday from our posh dinner for the annual Chandler Conference, I watched as hoards of drunk teenagers stumbled off the T, wearing a variety of novelty costumes with no protective eyewear. After surviving a week of flying solo on night float, dealing with dog bites and crazy glue in the eyes, I wasn’t sure how much more I could take. Luckily for me, the weekend itself stayed surprisingly quiet. We even got a chance to discover amazing bun rieu at Pho 2000 out in Dorcester. Believe it or not, the Vietnamese bakeries in this little neighborhood carry some of the best French bread in the city – freshly-toasted and perfect for the duck liver pâté we got from Budapest. Yum! Meanwhile, we’ve also become hooked on Fox’s new series Glee. Combining the music and melodrama of a young, diverse cast with the bitterness and sarcasm of Jane Lynch, the show is refreshingly entertaining. It reminds me of our SING! performances in high school, but with more pizazz and fewer Asians.