Job Swap with Rena: Optometrist

You can go ahead and lean your chin and forehead right in there Patty," Dr. Gina Wesley tells her patient.

Dr. Wesley runs her own practice called Complete Eye Care of Medina where she takes perfect care of her patients...at least until today.

"I'll give you this and you can wipe off all the surfaces here," Dr. Wesley says as she hands me some alcohol pads.

I start out easy on our swap by cleaning the equipment. Then we have Patty, our patient, read from the eye chart.

"We'll have her put her nose right there and put it up to her face. And, have her look down there at the end of the room. No squinting," says Dr. Wesley.

"T, Z, V, E, C, L," says Patty as she reads from the chart across the room.

We're checking her vision with her current prescription. She's reading 20/20 at a distance and then we try up close. I swear it's the tiniest letters known to man.

"We're going to go ahead and move on to some health testing here," says Dr. Wesley.

She can tell if there are deeper health issues by testing the eyes. She's looking for neurological conditions by testing things like pupil dilation.

"Look off into the distance Patty. Imagine a farm field far away," I say as I shine a bright light in her eye.

Peripheral vision and eye movement are other tests we're conducting using something called the occluder, which I've renamed Stick, because it seems easier.

We then check out the surface Patty's eyes with the slit lamp an move on to finding her new prescription.

"What looks better number one or number two?" I ask. "Number 2," says Patty. "What looks better Q or G?" I say being silly. "G," says Patty not skipping a beat.

If you thought this was simple, well you haven't tried to figure out astigmatism.

"This is the most complex part of figuring out the prescription," says Dr. Wesley. "I was going to say we've gone from stick to something very, very complicated that I'm having trouble understanding," I tell her.

We let Patty off the hook and skip the eye dilation today, but we have to pick out new glasses. I pull a pair of hideous monster glasses for her to try.

"Oh perfect! Dr. Wesley what do you think?" "I think we may have found a winner!" "I think we did. I'm not so bad at this job. Those were horrible,' I finally admit.

Find out more about Dr. Gina Wesley by visiting her website at Complete Eye Care of Medina. Want to swap jobs with Rena? Apply here! Check out more Job Swaps!