BOSTON, MA – Third-year medical student Iris Conners did the one thing that every medical trainee, and frankly every human in any field of medicine, aspires to achieve in their career: she saw the retina. You heard that right folks, Conners successfully peered into the looking balls of one of her classmates during a practice exam session. There’s just one catch – it was completely accidental.
“Normally, I dim the lights and have the patient stare at a point on the wall just to make it seem like I know what I’m doing,” Conners said during a press conference after the event. “I then do that thing where I get awkwardly close to their face while shining the beam into their skull, but again it’s usually all just for appearance,” she continued. “I make a few noises that sound like I’m finding something interesting, then say it looks good.”
But this time was different. Magic happened.
“I accidentally slipped while I was getting close to the patient’s face. My forehead slammed into his, but it resulted in the perfect alignment of the ophthalmoscope and his eyeball,” Conners said. “For a split second, I saw the awe and glory of the retina.”
Conners says that between nearly knocking him out with her forehead and her shriek of excitement seeing the retina, he was quite confused.
“I got whacked in the head and saw my life flash before my eyes,” Jack Sclera, the patient and her classmate, said. “Either that or it was just the light from the eyeball checker, however you pronounce that thing. No one knows.”
Sclera says he is honored to have been a part of the monumental occurrence. “I wouldn’t believe she actually saw it, but the fact that she nearly burst my eardrum from excitement speaks for itself.”
Conners says that she will next attempt to accidentally auscultate a heart murmur, but even she knows the odds of two events like this happening are astronomically slim.
