for people in surgery

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
1

<p>I have wanted to be a surgeon for a long time however, during my first semester of collage I lost most of my sight. My doctor discovered that there wasn’t much wrong with my right eye and that it may just be having a sympathetic reaction to the degeneration of the left eye. The sight in my right eye is slowly coming back and I hope to eventually have the full right eye back. I still have basic depth perception because my left eye has enough light and motion sensitivity to tell where things are. Is it possible to be a surgeon with basically only one fully-functioning eye? I have heard that a lot of surgeons use technology similar to microscopes to perform delicate surgery, I can use a microscope. </p>

<pre><code>Also I have two withdrawals during my first semester because I had just lost my sight and needed some time to adjust, will that look really bad on my transcript?
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<p>I would appreciate any advice you can give me. Thank you.</p>

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<p>Claudius, I think your essay will clear those niggling matters up quite nicely. Don’t you? :wink: I hope your healing goes well. My dad served in two wars with one eye. There will be things you can do without limitation or accomodation, and things that you can’t. He had to “cheat” on the rifle range to qualify to go to Vietnam (no depth perception) , but he passed. Get as well as you can and worry about that other stuff later.</p>

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<p>I agree. You can’t let your health be a burden at the moment. Does it mean I think you’ll be able to be a surgeon? Not necessarily. Many schools have physical performance requirements, and you’ll have to let them decide what your disability means. </p>

<p>That said, there are many things in surgery where three dimensional structures are projected as two dimensional images (ie laproscopic surgeries). As such, a lack of depth perception is not a burden in those scenarios.</p>

<p>Further, look at your big picture goals. Could you be happy as a physician who wasn’t a surgeon? There are many aspects of medicine in which visual acuity is not a major concern…could you be happy doing one of those things? If you truly, without a doubt, believe you cannot, then I think you need to re-evaluate exactly why you want to be a physician. Look big picture and determine what really draws you to medicine.</p>

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<p>Thank you for your replies, I guess I really just needed some reassurance after so recently discovering my vision problems.</p>