Health Services: Optometrist
Health Services
Optometrist:
Cherilyn Lai
by Brian McInnis
Sacred Hearts Academy graduate Cherilyn Lai was able to realize her dream of being an eye doctor in Hawaii. Of course, it wasn't that easy - she had to go to college for eight years to get her undergraduate and doctorate degrees at the University of Hawaii and the University of Southern California's College of Optometry. With degrees in hand, she's been back home practicing optometry with Mid Pacific Eyecare since 1994.
Taking Care Is Business
Finding out what she wanted to do with her life - generally speaking - wasn't a problem for Cherilyn. She knew she wanted to be in healthcare; she has two older cousins who went into the pharmacy field and she wanted to follow in their footsteps. The challenge was figuring out which of the many types of doctors she wanted to be. "I knew I wanted to go into the medical field and I wasn't quite sure which field I wanted to go into. I did a lot of volunteer work at the hospital in different offices and I kind of came to the conclusion that I really like working in an optometric practice." Dr. Lai says volunteering in different labs is one of the best ways to figure out which specific area to go into. "Out of UH I was thinking of doing pathology. Anything to do with using the microscope and whatnot. I actually volunteered in a (pathology) lab, but I didn't like it." She laughs. "Pretty much, yeah, it was an easy choice after that."
Got My Eye On You
Once college students complete their standard undergraduate degrees and decide they want to be an eye doctor, they must then go to a specialized school for a doctorate in optometry. Cherilyn went to Southern California's College of Optometry, a four-year program. The first couple of years, she admits, aren't exactly do-it-yourself. There is a lot of research, learning about microbiology, anatomy, and things of that nature. But the last couple of years are when things got hands-on. The students use their knowledge to examine each other's eyes. "It was awkward in the sense that these are not real patients, in fact I remember we used to dilate each other's eyes so much. We did find some interesting pathology in each other's eyes-stuff that they never knew about. One patient had a hole in the retina part of her eyes. It was a-symptomatic, so she didn't know it was there."
On The Cutting Edge
One of the most rewarding parts of Dr. Lai's job is knowing new and improved ways of diagnosing or fixing problems that come about all the time. "The fact that you can give a prescription to a patient and they can see, it's very good. Now we're able to use medication to treat eyes, only within the last four to five years that we were able to do that. We were taught that in school, but only able to do it recently because of legislation, and the whole aspect of actually treating patients with pink eye and that kind of stuff. Now these days, for the treatment of glaucoma, we're actually able to examine a patient's eyes and pick up on the condition a lot sooner, and we' re using new instrumentation to do that. There's a new computerized type of scanning equipment that examines the nerve in your eyes so it's a lot different compared to before."
Don't Cheat (For Your Own Good)
All that fancy new equipment is all well and good, but when you think of going to see an eye doctor, you probably think of the sign test with the differently sized letters that you must read at a distance. And - be honest - you may have tried to memorize the line a little to give yourself an edge, right? Truth be told, that's the simplest and quickest way for an optometrist to diagnose a patient's vision (for better or worse). So, even though it's for the person's own good, does she ever catch people cheating?
"Oh yeah, especially children," she said with a laugh. "I think I had one child where he covered his eye and he could see out of one eye and the other one he couldn't. He was cheating by moving the panel around and that kind of stuff. And I was surprised, he actually was amblyopic, meaning that his vision on that one side, he couldn't see."
Make Your Contacts
Cherilyn has this advice on finding a job in a tight market such as Hawaii's: "I think the key is really make your contacts. A lot of optometrists, you'd be surprised, they're in the retirement age. You can actually make your contacts and possibly join in with them and maybe buy a practice out. That's how it was when I was going to school." She laughs. "Buy 'em out!"