Q&A: Dori Carlson, OD
I was the kid who was in the optometrist’s office when I was young because I couldn’t see the chalkboard when I was in third grade. My optometrist put me in contact lenses at the age of nine, and I’ve been wearing them ever since, so I spent a bunch of time in my optometrist’s office.
How did you find optometry?
I was the kid who was in the optometrist’s office when I was young because I couldn’t see the chalkboard when I was in third grade. My optometrist put me in contact lenses at the age of nine, and I’ve been wearing them ever since, so I spent a bunch of time in my optometrist’s office. When I got into college, I knew I want to go into something with the health professions, and I couldn’t quite decide. I thought of a few different things, I wanted to be a biomedical engineer, I wanted to be a pharmacist, and none of those panned out. I guess I went back to what I was familiar with-it was optometry.
What's one thing your colleagues don't know about you?
Only my close friends know this, but I love weight lifting. Three times a week I go to the gym, and I lift weights for an hour. I started weight lifting with videos at my house and then a woman opened a fitness gym with group fitness classes and I signed up. Ever since, I’ve been going to her classes pretty regularly, which has been a blast.
What are the benefits of practicing in North Dakota?
I live in a very rural place. I live in a town of 1,500 people, that’s where one of our offices is. Our other office is in a town of about 4,500 people. And unlike other places that call themselves rural, there’s no houses or suburbs or anything else in between. We’re rural. So, what I love about where I work, I think it’s a very altruistic form of optometry. I see infants to 107-year-olds. If someone gets a piece of metal in his eye, lacerates his cornea, needs contact lenses, needs an infant eye exam, has macular degeneration, we wind up taking care of it all. So, kind of fun, in that sense.
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