Christopher McDaniels
When
this article was written, Christopher McDaniels,
Cherokee, was a second-year student in the
Northeastern State University Oklahoma College of
Optometry program.
As a boy,
Christopher McDaniels witnessed how good eye care can
transform lives. “My sister, Jennifer, is four years
younger than me,” says McDaniels. “When she was little, she
was very frustrated. Sometimes she’d run into walls and
even throw tantrums.” McDaniels’ parents took Jennifer to
an optometrist who discovered that she was seeing double
and prescribed glasses.
“It was so neat to see how something as simple as a pair of
glasses changed my sister’s life,” says McDaniels. “Her
demeanor completely changed. That Christmas, one by one she
took ornaments off the tree, looking at every detail, and
then carefully put them back on the tree.”
Witnessing his sister’s transformation drew McDaniels into
optometry. So did the lessons he learned growing up with
deaf parents. Having good vision, he realized, is important
for all people, but good vision is crucial for people who
depend on their eyesight for learning and communicating. “I
considered a career in audiology,” he says, “but I thought
I could help deaf people even more by making sure that
their visual system is effective.”
Vision is key to communication in the McDaniels household.
“Sign language is our primary language,” says McDaniels.
“My sister and I learned to use sign language before we
could speak. Now my sister is going to school to be a
professional sign language interpreter.”
While attending high school in Owasso, Oklahoma, McDaniels
realized that math and science were challenging for him,
but he worked hard and did well. His parents were his role
models. “Everything they’ve done has been against all
odds,” he says. “I learned from them that there is no
excuse for not doing what you want to do.”
McDaniels attended college at NSU and helped pay for his
education by working in the medical records department of
the College of Optometry. McDaniels think that his work in
medical records will help him better understand his staff
members’ perspectives when he is in practice.
Now in the second semester of hisHe moved on to becoming a
student at NSY’s College of Optometry, where he is a second
year student.
Doctor
in Training
Now in the second year of his professional education,
McDaniels says that a typical day includes attending
classes and learning skills in the laboratory where
students practice on each other. A year ago McDaniels and
his 25 classmates started doing school screening. Recently
they began seeing patients in the clinic. “We take the
patient’s history and do some initial testing. Then we go
to the checkout doctor and report what we’ve learned and
discuss how we should proceed. We go back to the patient
and do a few more tests and talk again with the check-out
doctor who then joins us in looking at the patient and
deciding what to do next.”
“When I starting seeing patients, I thought I’d be more
nervous,” McDaniels confesses. McDaniels, though, was
relatively calm. “That’s because the patients are so
gracious and understanding,” he says. “They seem to be
excited that they get to help us learn.”
When he graduates, McDaniels, who is on an Indian Health
Service (IHS) scholarship, will work for IHS for four
years. He says then he’ll either stay with IHS or open his
own practice. “I’d love to do vision therapy and optometry
for special needs groups, like deaf people or physically or
intellectually disabled people,” he says.
McDaniels advises prospective optometry students to take
upper level courses in math and science during high school.
“The advanced placement courses that I took in high school
helped prepare me for college,” he says. McDaniels also
recommends shadowing an optometrist. “A lot of people don’t
know what an optometrist does,” he says. “Dr. Norman
Hinkle, an optometrist in Owasso, was very helpful to me. I
shadowed him and he introduced me to other optometrists
with different kinds of practices. Shadowing these
optometrists helped me realize that there is much more to
optometry that I originally thought.”
This
article was originally published in the Summer 2008 issue
of
Winds of Change.
The cover artist, Brent Greenwood, Chicakasaw/Ponca, lives
in Edmond, Oklahoma.