Any Colorblind pre-Meds out there?

[Potato!]

Hi Everyone. I have a minor red-green colorblindness (well technically it's called a color deficiency). I was wondering if any of the other pre-meds out there, or Med students are also in this same boat. It's a fairly common condition in males, so I expect that some of you will also be color deficient. Let me know if you've had any difficulties in your pre-med/med pursuits or just in every day life.

Thanks!

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[patzan]

here are a bunch of reds and greens to torment you.

 

[linus]

i fear you will have a hard time succeeding in med school



j/k i have no experience with this, but i doubt it would hinder you that much as a doctor.

 

[Surfer75]

I have a friend who's just finishing 2nd yr and has a similar color blindness... but he's not interested in surgery.. LoL, just kidding.. in all seriousness it shouldn't pose a problem... a fellow R1 of mine is red/green colorblind and is headed towards cardio.

JT

 

[TheRussian]

I came out of the color closet last year.

It's kind of a funny story. I was taking a class called Sensory Processes and in the vision section our prof showed a slide with two pictures of green leaves, they both looked the same to me so I turned to my friend and asked her what the difference between them was and she said that one of them had red flowers in it. I was so suprised and that's how I found out I have red-green color deficiency.

I'll venture to diagnose myself and call my condition anamolous trichromacy because I can see a lot of different shades of red and green, I only have problems with some shades.

I actually asked one of my student hosts about this and he said he doesn't think that there are any red-green slides in histology so I have nothing to worry about

 

[evines]

I have the same thing you do. I was afraid USUHS wouldn't like it, and of course I failed the color vision test during the physical, but there was never another word about it from anyone.

So, do you have friends annoy you with "what color is this?" questions for weeks on end after they find out? I sure do. I guess they think it's a fun game.

 

[Xandie]

I'm a color blind female! I like it when people ask me if I can see something that's red. My response is usually that no, I can't, so people definetely shouldn't wear red or green around me!

 

[Alexander99]

I'm a color blind female! I like it when people ask me if I can see something that's red. My response is usually that no, I can't, so people definetely shouldn't wear red or green around me!

That sucks for your kids. All your sons are going to be color blind.

 

[evines]

Oh yeah, and about problems . . .The only problems I've encountered were with micro slides. I can tell the difference between G+ and G- when I do the staining, but during the practical, to try to make the red look really red, the TA just stained the slide with tons of safranin (sp?). So the slide was really deep red (instead of the lighter shade I was used to), which looked kinda how I remembered the really deep purple G+ cells looking. So I was screwed and had to fess up to the TA that I was colorblind, she told me color, and then follwed me around to all the rest of the stations "just in case." That was kinda embarrassing. But she was cute, so I didn't mind the extra attention.

 

[TheRussian]

Like I said, it's a year after I found out I was color defficient and my friends still make fun of me for it. Grrr.

 

[evines]

i fear you will have a hard time succeeding in med school



j/k i have no experience with this, but i doubt it would hinder you that much as a doctor.

And just so in case anyone is wondering . . . I can tell what is green and what is red in the above sentence, although the difference in color probably isn't as much as a normal person can see.
So it's like the russian said, only certain shades give me problems, not all shades. But annoyingly, the problems are not just limited to pure greens and reds, but to any shade that has green or red in it: Oranges, purples, etc, can look wrong to me, too.

 

[Potato!]

It's good to hear that I'm not the only Pre-Med out there with crappy color vision Thanks to those of you that have told me your experiences. I probably wouldn't have known I was colorblind, except for the fact that my grandpa is colorblind...so my parents suspected.

Alexander: None of my children will be colorblind. My male children will not have the defective gene passed on to them at all, while my female children will definately be carriers of the gene. My daughter's sons will then have a 1/2 chance of having the colorblindness, while her daughter's will have a 1/2 chance of being carriers. Ahhhh, X-linked reccessive disorders...you can tell who's getting ready for his MCAT!

And yes, my family and friends that know of my color problems constantly torment me...I deserve it sometimes, I can't say I've got great skills at matching my pants and my shirt.

 

[Xandie]

Yeah, but all of my sons would be! (I'm not having kids, so it's irrelevant at this point). I've known that I'm color blind since I was 12, but people still argue with me about it. I even had a teacher in high school tell me that women couldn't be color blind. Nice.

My biggest problem is reading green dry erase marker on a white board... for some reason, I can't make it out. (I have really bad regular vision too). Luckily, I go to a small school, so all of my professors know about it and the biology and chem departments have stopped using the green markers all together.

 

[Farrah]

I used to know someone who was completely colorblind - they could only see in black and white only. he got around fine but his world was basically like black and white television. he could guess colors though and he memorized important colors like the traffic lights etc.

 

[evines]

My biggest problem is reading green dry erase marker on a white board... for some reason, I can't make it out.

This reminded me of another problem I have . . . I can't always see the laser pointers all the profs use now. It depends on the background color and the laser in use, but I hate those things.

 

[samenewme]

This reminded me of another problem I have . . . I can't always see the laser pointers all the profs use now. It depends on the background color and the laser in use, but I hate those things.

My husband has that problems. He was attending a colloquium and was getting so irritated that the lectururers would throw up a slide and talk about "you can see in this part of the curve here that, blah-blah-blah..." without pointing to the part of the graph they were talking about. The semester was half over by the time it occurred to him that they were using a laser pointer.

Bright red lights just don't stand out to him (something to think about if you're a night bicyclist with just a red flasher on the back of your bike, by the way), and he has more trouble distinguishing orange and green than red and green. But sometimes there are funny mistakes; we were talking about a couple of my dresses and he said, "I really think that red dress you have is cuter." "The red clingy knit dress with the buttons? Honey, that's a gray dress."

Anyway, my point in all this is that he's studying neurobiology and his color vision generally doesn't impair him.

 

[ewing]

I know some colorblind doctors. It isn't a big deal, but three words of warning:
1. Don't even think about reading occult fecal blood tests yourself!
2. You might not want to go into pathology.
3. Jaundice and cyanosis. Be extra vigilant with a patient who might have one of these symptoms, but you really can't tell. Better to look stupid and ask the nurse than miss the diagnosis.

 

[jlee9531]

That sucks for your kids. All your sons are going to be color blind.

it isnt like a death sentence haha.

 

[nicko18]

once was watching a science show and they showed what the world looks like to a red/green colorblind person.

Lets just say it would put me off eating apples!

 

[nicko18]

Read a very interesting book about a famous colorblind artist once. His wife had to be there to make sure he was using the correct colors.

It's a big issue in photography and fields like that, but i dont know any areas in medicine you'd be disadvanteged (maybe some of those red stained mycobacteria though??)

 

[nicko18]

That sucks for your kids. All your sons are going to be color blind.

Is it on the sex-linked chromosome?

 

[Xandie]

Yeah, the mutation is on the X.