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personal reflections

My Encounter With a Teen in Trouble

Looking back through my long career as an optometrist, I remember many patients fondly and one, in particular, who broke my heart.

Early on, I worked in a Medicaid office on Chicago’s West Side. One day in my waiting room, I found a police officer accompanied by a young male in handcuffs. The officer told me the young man needed an eye exam.

At the beginning of the exam, I handed the 15-year-old prisoner a reading card, and asked him to read it. At first, he read fluently. But, as he got closer to the card’s bottom, his reading slowed and halted between words. Eventually, he just stared at the card, saying nothing.

I placed two lenses in front of his eyes. The young man began reading again and quickly with increasing emotion with each sentence. Watching him was like seeing someone learning to walk again. He then looked up at me with wonder.

When I explained to the 15 year-old that he had needed reading glasses, he started crying. And it wasn’t just a whimper. He cried like a child, gasping for breath, with tears streaking his black leather jacket. At that moment, the officer placed his arm on the young man’s shoulder to console him.

“I tried to tell my teachers, I tried to tell my Mama,” was all the young man could say. The officer assured me the young man would receive glasses. Then they left. I have often thought of that young man. He would be 50 years old this year.

— Julie Kos, O.D., St. Lemont, Ill.

Ohio State University Engineers have created a lens that combines the wide-angle view of insects’ eyes with the human eye’s focusing ability, making it ideal for smart phones and laparoscopic surgeries, as both cameras used currently lack depth. (Visit http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/bugeyelens. html for more information.)

Study Casts Doubt on Strabismic Rembrandt Claim

MANY FACTORS CAN EXPLAIN EXOTROPIA IN SELF-PORTRAITS

▪ Look at many of Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn’s selfportraits, and you’ll notice one of his eyes deviates. This has lead researchers to postulate that the painter of The Night Watch, among other lauded works, had unilateral strabismus. However, a study in September’s Optometry & Vision Science questions this claim.

Specifically, the study’s researchers say the appearance of strabismus is actually due to gaze overshoot caused by head turn, using a mirror to paint himself, angle kappas and personal artistic style, as portraits that Rembrandt and his students created, of theoretically nonstrabismic persons, often appear to have the condition as well.

The researchers arrived at this conclusion after studying 10 self-portraits — five that contained the largest difference in centration between the irises, and five that contained the smallest — and occluding each image with Photoshop to create two more images that revealed monocular gaze. Judgments were then made as to where Rembrandt was looking within the plane of his face.