4/10/2018 0 Comments Getting to Know Dr. Jill HeltonWe have learned over the past year that we never know what we are going to learn when we sit down for a "Get to Know" interview with a member of the VisionAmerica team. Well, Dr. Jill Helton certainly didn't disappoint. We hope you enjoy this interview as much as we did! Where did you grow up? I grew up just outside of Gadsden, Alabama in Rainbow City. As a child, what were your hobbies? I tried to play softball, but that did not work out well (laughs). What position did you play? I played right field. It was church league softball, but yeah… it was not my forte. And where did you go to college, optometry school, etc.? I went to college at South Alabama in Mobile and then went to optometry school at UAB. I was actually in the same class as Paul Batson, and several other OD’s in town. Shout out to the class of 1998! After graduating from UAB, I did my residency at VisionAmerica’s Nashville office and was then offered a position as a staff optometrist here in Birmingham. Since then, I think I have worked at most of our offices, at least briefly. So this is basically the only job you’ve ever had? Yes. In my chosen career, this is it. I have been very fortunate. Did you work any growing up? I babysat the same children for years and years, which was great. Then I was a cashier at Wal-Mart for two summers. How was that?
Not nearly as much fun as babysitting! Even though I hated it at the time, it was a good character-building experience for me. Well, what were some of the things you learned while working at Walmart? You catch a lot more flies with honey. Attitude goes a long way and if you are nice to people then, more times than not, they will reciprocate that niceness. And this was a long time ago. This was when Wal-Mart closed at 9:00 p.m. It was not the 24-hour Super Wal-Mart we know now. I believe it was in between my first summer and my second summer there when we got the scanners so that we could actually scan the items. Before that, we had to manually enter all of the items, which I secretly enjoyed doing very much! Since you’ve known Dr. Batson so long, give us some good Dr. Batson stories. He always sat in the back of the classrooms. I was a middle of the class kind of person. So who made better grades? I did. What made you want to practice eye care? I read about it in a career book in my guidance counselor’s office in high school. I thought it sounded interesting and then I observed with two optometrists in Gadsden, Dr. David Burton and Dr. Delton Hartzog, and they loved their careers so here I am. What are some challenges in eye care that have proven to be pretty big hurdles? Well, patient care is by far the best part of the job. As anyone can attest, staff management issues can often outweigh the challenges we face in medical decision making. What are some of the things you find interesting or get excited about seeing come through the door? I really enjoy working with glaucoma and dry eye patients. Of course, those are two things that can be quite challenging, but I do enjoy those patients. As a dry eye patient myself, and someone with several risk factors for glaucoma, I easily relate to them. Does anything come to mind that a referring doctor could do to make it easier for you when you see their patient? Good communication as far as medical history, medications and treatments that a patient has tried and have been unsuccessful. Patients don’t always have the best memory of every medication they have taken. And I will turn that question around to the network and ask for any feedback on how I can better serve them and their patients! Tell us about your family. Scott and I have been married for 23 years, we don’t have any children, and we have two adorable dogs who have us both wrapped around their little paws. What do the two of you enjoy doing together? We are definitely foodies. Ok. Let’s talk restaurants. What are the top three restaurants in Birmingham? 1. Highlands Bar and Grill - It is my favorite. I have never had a bad meal there and I get something different every time. Their fish is always wonderful and they do these sauteed crab claws with a ginger aioli that are amazing. And the service is impeccable. It is always our special occasion pick. The staff have all been there forever and that tells you something. They enjoy what they are doing. 2. Gianmarco’s- It is right near our house and we love the servers in the Wine Bar out back. 3. Chez Fonfon- Frank Stitt knows his food! Do you cook a lot at home? (Laughs.) Well, we did. Ok. Fun fact about me: I have been without a kitchen since June 28th of 2016. Is a functional kitchen just not a priority or…. ? Well, since it is this far out, it doesn’t really seem like a priority. The dishwasher flooded the kitchen and since then we have gone back and forth between remodeling everything or tearing the house down and starting from scratch. Everyone who has been through a whole house remodel tells us to tear down, which is my vote. Do you just not go in there or what? No, I still go in there, unfortunately. There is a section of the floor where the floor beneath the subfloor is exposed to which I just shield my eyes to when I walk through to the refrigerator. I set up a microwave and toaster in my den, but you cannot use them at the same time or you will trip the breaker. We have a designer we are working with on the floor plan so we’ll see. We eat out a good bit. There is a fantastic taco truck off less than a mile from the house we frequent a good bit. My motto is “tacos are always a good idea”. Do you like to travel? We do like to travel, but we stay pretty busy. We took a fun little trip to Austin recently and enjoyed that. We ate a lot of good BBQ and visited some breweries. My husband loves beer so we had to go out to Jester King, which apparently a big thing on the sour beer scene. What do you do in your free time? Do you like to read? TV? Obviously not cooking… The hobby that I have gotten into over the past two years is bourbon. Some of my friends and I started a bourbon club and we do blind samplings and make our tasting notes; it’s very studious. Well, what’s your favorite? I recently had a 17 year-old Eagle Rare that was amazing. You cannot go wrong with any of the Buffalo Trace Antique collection! Have you done the Bourbon Trail in Kentucky? Yeah, we went last year and did the trail. It was great! So every year around the weekend involving MLK Day we take a trip. Tell us more about the group. Well, we are four ladies who have been friends for years and eventually realized we each enjoyed bourbon. Before you ask, we do allow our husbands to come to our “official” tastings, but there are far more gatherings with just us four. Our group has like 750 followers on Instagram! We were just guests on two podcasts for the ABV Network, called the “Bourbon Daily.” Getting back to medicine, are there any types of patients you don’t like to see? Can I say bratty children, or does that make me sound like a horrible person? And the challenge there is usually the parents sitting with their noses on their phones while the kids are climbing all over everything and touching all of the equipment. On the other hand, I had a six-year-old come in recently and I was trying to get her to tell me how much pain she was in. I was holding my hands apart and asking, “Is it this much pain or that much pain?” She said, “It’s about a six out of 10.” I was just thinking ‘I love you’. You are beyond your years. What’s the most interesting case you’ve seen recently? I had a 24-year-old man come in with decreased vision back in the fall. He had a raging vitritis in one eye so dense I couldn’t see through it and a swollen nerve with a macular star in the other; it was terrible. So he got sent to an infectious disease specialist and was diagnosed with syphilis and HSV. It was the first and only case of neurosyphilis I have ever seen. That was 5:00 on a Friday. No joke. We hope you enjoyed this interview! If you have any ideas for interviews or a piece you would like to see in the future, please let us know!
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