We have now celebrated our 21st year in my practice here in Rancho Cucamonga, CA. I so enjoy being in private practice. Optometry for me has been a most rewarding career. I have seen many of my patients grow from childhood to adulthood. It is most gratifying when patients have confidence in the practice to refer their family and friends. I am quite involved with the happenings in the surrounding area. I'm involved with three different chambers of commerce. Interesting enough, I am one of the only health care professionals that is active in the functions of the chambers. I thoroughly enjoy both the direct networking and social networking (electronic) aspects of my business.

If I had to do it all over again, I would certainly pick the same profession.

Sometimes when you prescribe an individual over forty years of age glasses for distance and they don't want a bifocal, there can be discomfort. I had a patient who was in her fifties whom we prescribed distance glasses for ( she normally takes her glasses off for reading). She stated the distance was great but she got dizzy looking at her dashboard while driving as well as looking at the ground. I had to weaken the prescription slightly so she could view up close more easily while not disturbing the distance vision significantly. the outcome was good.

A patient was in the office today discussing with me about an optometrist who worked in her facility. The facility deals with injured and neurologically compromised individuals. The optometrist worked with patients who had either brain injuries or strokes. He dealt with rehabilitative care of these individuals which could involve prisms or actual vision training. The results of this could be quite profound.

I had an interesting patient that I have been working with over the last couple of months. The patient was a male in his 20s. He noticed a sudden blurring of his right eye. I was unable to correct it with glasses or contacts. I looked in the eye and I could see the central part of the back of the eye was abnormal (maculopathy). I immediately had him referred to a retinal specialist. There is an eye condition which does affect young males who are under stress this way.

Fortunately, I just saw the patient yesterday. His best corrected vision with glasses was 20/20 in the affected eye. The condition as followed by the retinal specialist resolved on its own. In other words no surgery or medication was administered. I did note that there was residual scarring of the macula. This did not seem to affect the patient's vision significantly.

Diabetes is one of the leading causes of blindness. I just examined a 43 year old who has a 20 year history of diabetes. He stated that his sugar has not been under the best of control and has not his eyes checked for about five years. The patient did have a small amount of diabetic change in the back of the eye for which we referred. Diabetics should have their eyes examined no less than once per year and more if eye problems are discovered. It could make the difference of possibly saving one's vision.

I recently had follow-up information on a patient whom I treated several years ago. This was an individual who after brain surgery could not walk straight and would walk into walls. She now works for a friend (who is the patient relating the information to me yesterday), has a drivers license and is in a wonderful state of mind. Before we helped to remedy the situation with glasses, she wasn't able to work, couldn't drive and was depressed. It's cases like this why I enjoy practicing so much.

There are often various symptoms of vision problems. Over my years of practice, I've come across a certain type of patient who has trouble using their eyes together. In addition to having problems with reading including loss of place, fatigue and headaches, the is one more symptom. They have motion sickness when sitting in the back seat of a car. What's interesting is that there's often significantly less motion sickness when driving in the front seat of a car and almost no problem when driving. I equate this to that there's more visual processing in the back seat where you see things off to the side, things two feet away and things at distance. In the front seat you only notice basically things in front of you far away and when driving, you have tactual back up (with holding the steering wheel) to the vision.