No more pain.

When you see the picture below, do u feel 'ouch!'? Its tip is touching the cornea of your eye. Normally, you will blink, blink and blink if something get really close to your eyes. It's a natural automated reflex.

picture adapted from Kaytabas.com

On the early morning of 6th of March, I have my clinic for Diagnostic Techniques to learn to use Goldmann Tonometry which is the gold standard for measuring intra-ocular-pressure of the eye.

To be able to do it, we will first need to check the structure of the cornea and see if it's healthy. Mine is just as healthy as it looks, apart from some dry eyes.

There was another group who did their lab ahead of us, and some classmate has scaring and scratch as a result from the invasive technique.

It was my turn to do my friend's eye, I carefully put anaesthetic on her eye (to cut off the pain receptor, otherwise I would not be able to perform the test). Then I put some fluorescein (some colouring) on her eye after the eye is anaesthesised.

Under the guidance of my supervisor, Dr Kennedy, he carefully help me to see how I do and the tip Goldmann Tonometry head just touches and flatten the cornea. I can see a nice picture of it and measure the IOP. I was calm when performing it and everything went well. Satisfied.

Then it's my turn of being a patient, to let my fellow classmate to do it on me. I put my trust on her. Everything is done as said. Due to my dry eyes, she only get to see a wee bit of line from my eyes and have to do it on second attempt after I blink a couple of times.

As usual, supervisor will check our eyes before we left to make sure our eyes does not has any unwanted effect. Mine turn out to be:

The circle is exactly the same as the area of the tip of the tonometer. Looks like I got a stamp on my eye. Looks cool right? My partner was afraid if she has done anything bad to my eyes and might have scar my cornea forever (which can hardly be cure). Supervisor asked me to go back to the clinic few hours later, turn out everything is gone. Phew! I am not worried at all because I know it has something to do with my dry eyes. Conclusion is, my dry eyes has quick tear break-up time so it makes the fluorescein stain difficult to go away. I dont feel anything, just normal.

No worries.

Having anaesthetic putting on my eyes is just a special feeling. Patient is always warned not to rub their eyes after having anaesthetic on, as it has risk of rubbing of the top layer of your cornea (because you dont feel any pain at all), result in your eye will be blurr for the rest for your life.

Do you like anaesthetic? Putting time all over your body just not to feel pain. No. I dont like them of being numb and lack of feeling.