Dr. Alex Sigmund, DACVO, joins Dr. Andy Roark to share his journey from uncertain pre-vet student to rising ophthalmology star and social media sensation, better known as The Vet Eye Guy. In this episode of the Cone of Shame Podcast, Alex opens up about falling in love with ophthalmology during vet school, navigating the competitive world of residencies, and building a wildly popular educational Instagram presence. From his passion for teaching to the moment he realized his bite-sized videos were making a global impact, Alex talks candidly about the heart behind his content—and why he’s determined to make eye care more approachable for veterinarians everywhere. If you’re curious about becoming a specialist, growing your online voice, or just love a good origin story, this one’s for you. Let’s get into it!
You can also listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts!
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ABOUT OUR GUEST
Alex is a dedicated veterinary ophthalmologist with a passion for educating pet owners and veterinarians about animal eye health. With a background from UGA and the University of Tennessee, Alex shares insights from a diverse career treating various species, including dogs, cats, and exotic animals. Based in Atlanta, Alex offers teleconsultations and engages with a growing community of animal lovers.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Andy Roark: Welcome everybody to the Cone of Shame podcast. I am your host, Dr. Andy Roark. Guys, I am here today with my new friend, Alex Sigmund. He is, he is one of my favorite discoveries of 2025.
He is the vet eye guy on Instagram and TikTok, if you are of the social media persuasion. He’s super fun. He’s really interesting. He’s growing a, really impressive audience over there. You’ll hear the story of how I became aware of him at the beginning of this episode. I wanted to talk to him about one, how do you become a boarded ophthalmologist and then end up doing so much work on social media and how did that sort of come to be and, what did he learn? And we just dive into that and it’s really fascinating. We talk about about ophthalmology residencies and internships and kinda what the journey is of going through those sorts of things and, how he found ophthalmology as a passion.
So this is a great episode for people who love origin stories. It’s a great episode for people who are thinking about being boarded in a in a specialty. It is a great episode for people who are interested in growing a social media presence themselves, and we get talked to him about what works and how he got started and what he found.
And so anyway, it’s a lovely, just all around very fun episode with a very interesting person. I hope you guys will enjoy it. Let’s get into it.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: This is your show. We’re glad you’re here. We want to help you in your veterinary career. Welcome to the Cone of Shame with Dr. Andy Roark.
Dr. Andy Roark: Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Alex Sigmund. How are you, sir?
Dr. Alex Sigmund: I am doing great. How are you?
Dr. Andy Roark: Man, I am so fantastic. I am thrilled to get time, some time to sit down and talk with you. You have been my favorite discovery in 2025. I’m just gonna gush at you right from the beginning.
Dr. Alex Sigmund: Wow, thank you.
Dr. Andy Roark: so this is I’m so thrilled to get to spend some time with you.
We’ve gotten to talk a couple of times in the recent past, and so I, for those who don’t know you, you are a boarded ophthalmologist and you do a lot of work on social media. You are the vet I guy online. You are on on Instagram. I think you’re on TikTok as well. I’m not on TikTok. I see you on Instagram.
Dr. Alex Sigmund: Mostly Instagram.
Dr. Andy Roark: Instagram, you. So the way that I became aware of you is I ran into you at VMX got to speak for a second, and you, I did not know you, and you, you came up and introduced yourself and someone took a, a photo of the two of us, and it got back in My team that works for me saw this photo and lost their minds.
They were like, do you know who that is? And I was like, I’m sorry, I, I don’t, and they’re like, that’s the vet eye guy. And then. I just got from all of them, I got different pieces of your social media and things that they loved.
Dr. Alex Sigmund: Oh, wow.
Dr. Andy Roark: I have to be totally transparent. I have a technician named Tyler Grogan, who is a CVT, and she worked in an optho though clinic, and she loves eyes.
And so I think that the reaction was even extra like heightened from her. They were like, you have got to see this. And so I started, I just, that was in January. I started watching your social media and alex, you do outstanding work.
Dr. Alex Sigmund: Your Oh, thank
Dr. Andy Roark: Your stuff is fun and interesting and is bite-sized, and you take these really sort of scary concepts and make them very digestible and and easy to understand in like 60 seconds, which is really, really, really hard to do. And so
Dr. Alex Sigmund: Wow. Thank you.
Dr. Andy Roark: Well, that’s, it’s true. But I go, I don’t think people. don’t realize how hard it is to actually do any real education in 60 seconds. I think maybe it’s just I’m verbose, but I think it’s very hard to do.
Dr. Alex Sigmund: It’s been a, it’s been a learning curve for sure to go from making these, we’re having hour long lectures and then trying to condense that down. And I may spend an hour making a 30 second video, but I get there.
Dr. Andy Roark: Do you really?
Dr. Alex Sigmund: Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark: when you, when you start to do it, is it like, so what’s your, lemme just talk about sort of the education and how this, how this stuff gets made. What’s your process for sort of making these videos that you then, that you then put out? Well, from, from, from conception of idea. How do you get to a finished product?
Dr. Alex Sigmund: So it literally, something pops into my head where, or I have a question that someone asked me online or an experience with a client or with an RDVM. Anything that, anything like that can inspire something. And then I just, I. That over for, 10 minutes probably. And then I’m like, I’m gonna make the video.
I feel inspired. Now I’m gonna go ahead and do it. And then I just do it over and over again until I get it right.
Dr. Andy Roark: So
Dr. Alex Sigmund: So some, sometimes that’s no script.
Dr. Andy Roark: start filming it and then trying it again and again.
Dr. Alex Sigmund: Yep. Yep. I got, I have a general outline. Nothing is written down. I very much am just off the cuff, want it to be how I am in real life, which is if you bring up eyes around me, I will immediately jump into some type of lecture which is, to the detriment of my friendships.
But, that’s how I wanted it to be natural, with my videos. That’s how I talk about it anyway, so I might as well
Dr. Andy Roark: Well,
Dr. Alex Sigmund: it video style.
Dr. Andy Roark: you definitely bring that across it. It’s, it’s so easy. You watch a couple of videos and you feel like, you know, you, you know it, it’s,
Dr. Alex Sigmund: Oh good.
Dr. Andy Roark: a, couple of them and you just, very quickly I go, oh, I love Alex. That guy’s the best.
Dr. Alex Sigmund: Wow. Thank you.
Dr. Andy Roark: It’s, it’s really well done. Let, let’s talk a little bit about sort of how, how you got started and so, so you were you, were you one of those kids that always wanted to be a veterinarian when you were growing up?
Dr. Alex Sigmund: Actually, no. I figured I would do something in the upper level sciences and once I got to undergrad I went to University of Georgia and they have a large agriculture program there. And as fate would have it, I accidentally, selected biological sciences as my major instead of biology. And so biology was in a 15,000 person Arts and sciences
college and biological Sciences was in the College of Agriculture, which is only 1500 students.
Dr. Andy Roark: Oh.
Dr. Alex Sigmund: so I got a lot of really hands-on, one-on-one mentorship. I wasn’t just a number. And then I was able to get into some courses within like, actually the school of poultry medicine and do certain like surgery, surgical training while still in undergrad.
So by the time I even got to vet school, I was like already able to suture and do suture patterns and do some anatomy and physiology and, stuff like that. And so I was sitting down with my mentor at the time and trying to decide am I gonna go to med school? Because that’s where I was gonna go versus vet school.
And he basically said, Alex, you need to go to vet school. And
Dr. Andy Roark: He was like, let me make this easy for you.
Dr. Alex Sigmund: He is let’s make it easy. You love animals, you’re gonna do great. You should go to vet school. And aunt is actually a general practitioner, veterinarian as Well,
And so I had that context too, where I was like, yes, I can totally do it.
And so I applied. I did not get in my first time but got in my second time and had a gap year there, which honestly I’m very thankful for. It gave me a little bit of a reprieve before jumping straight into vet school.
Dr. Andy Roark: What did you do in your gap year real quick?
Dr. Alex Sigmund: So I still lived in Athens with some friends and I worked as a cater waiter at a country club, and I worked as a delivery driver for Jason’s Deli.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah,
Dr. Alex Sigmund: and then
Dr. Andy Roark: You lived, you lived the, you lived the college student life of like, no classes, just living in Athens, Georgia,
Dr. Alex Sigmund: Yep.
Dr. Andy Roark: doing things. amazing. That’s I’m not sure I would’ve recovered from that, but that was, that’s an amazing play. It’s How did you present yourself to vet school? Did you roll in and say, look at me, I’m gonna be a poultry vet.
Like, how did you I totally, I got a master’s degree in Zoology and rolled in like I was gonna be a research person and then I’m just gonna become a companion. But yeah.
Dr. Alex Sigmund: My only real experience was with general practitioners, like I actually ’cause of my aunt. I had no idea that there were specialists of any kind. When I even got into vet school it wasn’t until I started meeting the professors and seeing extra letters after their names and being like, wait, who?
What does that mean? Oh, you’re a surgeon, you’re an anesthesiologist. Those exist? And then it just snowballed from there. As I met more and more people, and it wasn’t until actually my fourth year in clinics that I had ophthalmology rotation and saw cataract surgery and knew that’s what I wanted to do.
And I was gonna figure out how I could go and how I could get cataract surgery, as a skill and made that a goal. And I started delving a little bit more into ophthalmology. Like I wasn’t even, I didn’t even take the ophthalmology elective in vet school. But no, ’cause I was like, I loved everything.
I was conflicted ’cause I was like, am I gonna, am I gonna be a general practitioner? Because in general practice you can do a lot, a little bit of everything. Am I going to be an internist because they, I love puzzles and putting the cases together and they just deal with kind of the whole system in a way.
And then once I saw the cat cataract surgery and I was like, oh, ophthalmology. And then you see that in ophthalmology, you get to do surgery, you get to do internal medicine, you get to do oncology sometimes, and technically you do plastic surgery on their eyelid reconstructions. And, you get a little more of a microcosm of the body because the eye is so complex that involves a lot.
And I was able to just channel all that energy into learning a lot about a little versus a little about a lot.
Dr. Andy Roark: I, I imagine, I imagine the scene in the movie where there’s like the dance floor and then like the, the dancing people kind of part, and there’s one person who’s just highlighted and that’s ophthalmology for you. You were like, there it is.
Dr. Alex Sigmund: Yeah, it was an aha type of moment where, and, it’s funny ’cause I had heard one of our internal medicine residents said that she saw some procedure when she was a student and it made her go, I want to be an internist. And so,
I just, it really resonated when I saw that surgery and I was like, holy cow, I want do that and then figure out like how to do it.
Which also brought angst because it’s really hard to get into ophthalmology programs,
Dr. Andy Roark: There’s not a lot of them.
Dr. Alex Sigmund: Which I did not know.
Dr. Andy Roark: like, yeah, it’s super competitive.
Dr. Alex Sigmund: yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark: Did you know when you started down that path, or did that only become clear to you later on?
Dr. Alex Sigmund: Only later on did I realize where I was told.
Dr. Andy Roark: Before or after you got in? Did you realize how hard it was to get in?
Dr. Alex Sigmund: Oh like before I got into the residency. Oh Yeah.
I knew ahead of time because when you, when I applied, there were nine positions for 70 or 80 applicants. And so you apply to everything and cross your fingers. And the first time I applied I did not get a residency. And that just made me again take a beat and reevaluate if this was truly what I wanted to do, because it is a lot of sacrifice to wait.
Dr. Andy Roark: Back to Jason’s
Dr. Alex Sigmund: not
Dr. Andy Roark: Deli for another
Dr. Alex Sigmund: Oh, I know, this time I was a little bit more productive with my time and I did an ophthalmology internship down in Tampa, Florida with some three phenomenal ophthalmologists that really helped hone my exam skills and some of my surgical skills
that really started me off at the right. At the right spot when it came to starting my actual residency, which I got the second time around.
Dr. Andy Roark: What did you, what did you think when you were doing this internship year? So I’m always interested in this, so it’s, it’s a thing I think a lot of people don’t talk about. So there we have a lot of colleagues and they come out of vet school and they apply for the residency and it doesn’t happen the first year just for the
same reasons that you said of a huge number of applicants for a very small position. And then it’s really interesting to me to watch people and how they respond. To that initial setback. And I, it’s, there’s a, there’s people are, are very different. Some people go, well, it’s not meant to be. And there’s some people who say, oh no, I, I want this.
And there’s a certain amount of resilience. What was sort of your, your experience as you went into this internship where you, did you see it as a stepping stone to where you’re going? Did it feel like a setback? How, how was that?
Dr. Alex Sigmund: Definitely a mixed bag, I would say because of course you. You’ve already spent so much time in vet school, you’ve done a rotating internship. That’s five years. You know of time after you’ve just finished undergrad, you are getting older, you’re not making very much money. You have loan. So there’s all this, all these factors like floating around and you’re like, gosh, am I going to sacrifice another year to hopefully get one of these sought after programs that’s going to extend my education another,
formal education another three years, three or four years, depending on the program. It’s just, it’s a lot to consider. And so I wondered wanted to do it enough, and I think, throughout my education, there’s always been a next step there. And I had to really? think about, am I doing this just because the next step, or am I doing it because I really.
want to, am I doing it because it’s hard and I’m trying to prove something?
Or is it really the passion that I think it is? And having to go to the specialty internship. I got to see every single day, like rotating internships. You get a couple weeks of the specialty you like like mine is, ophthalmology is usually an elective, so we don’t have very many weeks.
And I went from that to now. I’m doing it every single day at a very high volume practice. With three different ophthalmologists that I get to learn from. And so it’s if I don’t like it here, then I will feel better about not doing the residency, like testing it out or this is gonna cement that this is what I meant to do. And that’s pretty much what happened. I thrived. I loved it. I worked I and I, it didn’t even feel like work, which is honestly. My dad has always said, find something that love to do and you’ll never work a day in your life. And that was exactly what it was. I loved going to work.
I was there at 7:30 every single morning. I was like, last to leave. I was studying, I was outlines, research articles, journal clubs. I was like so invested. And that just really cemented that, okay, I’m gonna, I’m gonna do this. And fortunately I got a call from one of the programs from the University of Tennessee that I had applied to before and they were like, Hey, we just.
We just want you to come and take this spot. We don’t wanna look at anybody else. ‘Cause they had also heard, I guess from my mentors during my specialty internship, hopefully good things since they picked me. And so that was just sent me over the moon. And I even in residency, I.
I’d say people think I’m crazy. I would do residency again. Which I don’t think a lot of people would say, but I loved my program. My mentors were phenomenal. I got so much great experience. It really prepared me so well to go out into specialty practice. My program was very busy, even for a even for.
It was, I would say it’s probably busier than I was out in private practice
Dr. Andy Roark: Really?
Dr. Alex Sigmund: We would see, anywhere from 18 to 28 cases a day and do sometimes three or four cataract surgeries a week. It was like very busy for for an academic institution, which just really made me feel like, oh Yeah.
I can totally do this because I’m having fun these three years in residency while also studying for boards, which is a whole other headache.
And then to get out into the real world, I’m like, can definitely do this ’cause I’ve been doing it and it’s awesome.
Dr. Andy Roark: Well, so you’re, you’re clearly invested in this. You, you’ve, you’ve found your, your passion that you want to pursue, which is, which is wonderful. Alex, when did this start to transition to the stuff that you’re doing online? Because you, your, your online presence has really grown very quickly. You’re very popular.
Did you, did you have aspirations of being, like a media personality coming out of your, of your residency? Was that even on your, on your radar?
Dr. Alex Sigmund: Not at all, frankly. I knew that I enjoyed teaching during internship and residency. I loved rounds and discussing things on the floor with the students and and other interns and residents sometimes. I loved doing all of that, and so I knew that I was capable of doing it, and I had some positive feedback during those in person,
experiences. So I was like, okay. I can talk about eyes and people not fall asleep, so that’s good. And then social media just I stumbled upon, I had my own kind of personal account, but then I randomly the name, the vet eye guy popped into my head. And I, went ahead and registered it on Instagram and I held onto it for, I would say probably a year and a half.
And it was just sitting there unused, hidden away. And we were doing this service dog eye screening that program that A CVO our college puts on every May for service animals. And somehow a woman on there found that. The vet eye guy account and tagged me in her post and I was like, how did she even find that?
‘Cause it’s hidden. It was a private account. And I was like, oh, this sure, I’ll, share it, and started activating it. And then I was posting throughout that day with the different people that I saw or met that day and. I think what was the real trigger though, to really start making content was I saw some, a video that was wrong.
Dr. Andy Roark: Oh yes. It’s like a, like a sliver under your skin. Like, oh, it’s like a splinter.
Dr. Alex Sigmund: Yeah. And I was like, I haven’t seen, because I’m on social media, I’m a doom scroller. Okay. and I haven’t seen anything about ophthalmology education. And so I was like, you know what, why not, why can’t I do it? And so I met some people that are vet influencers and they were like, you just gotta commit and you gotta do it.
I was like, I hate recording myself. And they were like, does it.
matter? Because that’s what people wanna see. They don’t necessarily respond as well to posts. They need reels and la and I was like, oh, okay. Shoot. Okay. And then just got more and more comfortable with it. And you find your little niche of what, or not niche, I guess your stride about what feels good how, like I never wanna feel pressured ’cause I don’t want, ophthalmology is not work to me, so I don’t wanna feel like social media is work.
So that’s why I really only post if I feel like it. Now the quote unquote algorithm may not like that, but it at least allows me to remain how I wanna be, which is authentic, my honest with how I present my information. And about something I’m passionate about ’cause I hope that comes through versus me talking about a topic that I don’t care about.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah. What is the that, this is great. you seem to be someone who has had these lightning strike moments sort of throughout your career where you this inspiration or this, or piece of feedback. What is the first time that you can remember someone coming to you and saying, like, a real person, not just a a, like on the screen, but someone saying, wow, this was really helpful. This meant a lot to me. I, I’m, I’m sure that that’s, that’s gotta be a wonderful experience. I tell you, in my experience, it’s a wonderful, it’s a wonderful thing when it happens. I, I won’t act like it. It’s, it’s not something that, that I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing.
But for me, it’s always just wildly motivating when a real actual person comes up and says, you did this thing. Do what? What’s the first ever experience that you really remember in that regard?
Dr. Alex Sigmund: Probably the most, Yeah.
probably the first one was honestly relatively recently at. VMX and I got to give a, I got to give a lecture at VMX, which was awesome, and we had five, 600 people there, and I was like, floored with the response. But at the end, people come up afterwards and they wanna ask you questions and the very last person, everyone else had pretty much gone.
And there was this woman hanging back and she, came up to me and she was honestly very emotional. Like tears welling up. Not able to speak very well. And she got out to me that, she was from another country that doesn’t have ophthalmology. They don’t have a lot of training there.
And that my Instagram page and has completely changed how they treat their animals there and has given them so much more confidence in what they’re doing which is only helping their patients. And she was just so overwhelmed to actually meet me and I’m standing there What, like I just make little 32nd videos about cherry eyes or something, and not realizing this international
reach that it, it has, and it really, I will always really come back to that experience as something that would just spur me on. And if I ever doubt what I’m doing, it’s like I will remember her, that I was, there was this impact that I unintentionally made. And so now I feel like when I’m making these videos, it’s, it is for someone, it is for this per, that woman it is for, I had someone call me or message me from Sweden yesterday and I had someone in India, that messages me. And so it’s like I do it. I’m doing it for those people. Plus of course, vet students and any GP that feels like ophthalmology wasn’t a focus in school because I don’t think it, it is a big focus in school these days,
unfortunately. And so there’s a lot, that’s another reason to make these things is that there’s just so much uncertainty with how people feel about their ophthalmic skills and that the more comfortable you can become, obviously the more confident you can become and the more you can do and the better outcomes.
And so it’s just like this whole chain of events that is cool to see.
Dr. Andy Roark: So you talk about the, you know, the thi the misinformation that’s out there bothers you. What, what are your top sort of pet peeve pieces of misinformation that you think are good without starting a, a Holy War? What, what are, what are the things that you see out there that you were like, I really wish people would not promote this idea, or, or would not?
You know, sort of, I’m not saying it’s necessarily an intentional falsehood
Dr. Alex Sigmund: Sure.
Dr. Andy Roark: this is, this is information that’s not helpful to our patients.
Dr. Alex Sigmund: If you have seen some of my ulcer videos, antibiotic use videos you will know that the use of fluoroquinolones for non-infected ulcers is a huge issue.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yep.
Dr. Alex Sigmund: As far as trying to be, have good antibiotic stewardship. And so when I see people recommending or talking about using ofloxacin or ciprofloxacin for indolent ulcers or your routine ulcers, or even just for conjunctivitis I get a little briskly at that.
‘Cause we just don’t have very many antibiotics at our disposal. So That’s number one. Number two is probably
Dr. Andy Roark: I think
Dr. Alex Sigmund: okay.
Dr. Andy Roark: this is a fantastic, I’m like, I’m like, oh yeah, I’m checking myself mentally. I’m like, no, I think I’m good on this one. I think I, okay.
Dr. Alex Sigmund: What makes that challenging as well is that there are ophthalmologists that use fluoroquinolones more frequently than I think they should.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah
Dr. Alex Sigmund: and that gets confusing and for general practitioners. Yeah, anyway, in my, in at the University of Tennessee, they’re really big on antibiotic stewardship.
I know at Iowa State, they’re really big on antibiotic stewardship as well. And so that’s the vibe that I will continue. Number two is probably that eyedrops can dissolve cataracts.
Dr. Andy Roark: Okay.
Dr. Alex Sigmund: There are products on the market that are, reported to dissolve cataracts, and that is not true.
And so it basically takes advantage of people who don’t know any better and just trying to help their animals. And then I guess the last one may be removing cherry eyes.
Dr. Andy Roark: Him off.
Dr. Alex Sigmund: Just cutting them off. I am they’re, yeah. don’t do that.
Dr. Andy Roark: yeah. I just, I just got, I
Dr. Alex Sigmund: just, don’t do it
Dr. Andy Roark: I felt, I felt the, the chill go down my spine like, Ooh. Ouch.
Dr. Alex Sigmund: because I think there’s a lot of I think the success rate for cherry eye surgery when done correctly is 90% or higher regardless of the procedure you’re doing. ’cause there’s a lot of different procedures you can do. And I think a lot of vets will under report success rates because they aren’t as experienced.
And they are reporting more about their success rates rather than like success rates as a whole for this surgery. And I’ve heard people say, my vet cut it out because they said there’s only a 30% chance the surgery would work. And I’m just like. That’s hopefully you don’t get issues later on, but that’s where like I have a video in the queue for Instagram about doing cherry eye surgery.
And I wanna help with wet labs at conferences and stuff like that to help people become more comfortable because that’s a fairly straightforward procedure that once you’re comfortable with, has a very high success rate and ensures or helps to maintain a healthy tear film.
Dr. Andy Roark: Dr. Alex Sigmund thank you so much for being here and sharing your journey and experience with me. I really appreciate it. Where can people find you online? The the vet eye guy. Tell me more about that.
Dr. Alex Sigmund: Yeah, so I’m the vet eye guy on Instagram and TikTok. I would say just tune into the Instagram. That’s where most of the good stuff is, and I just hope people can learn a little bit, laugh a little bit, and then take a little bit to share with other people.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah. Thanks so much for being here guys. Thanks for tuning in everybody. Take care of yourselves, gang.
Dr. Alex Sigmund: Yeah. Thank you.
And that’s what I got guys. Thanks for being here. Thanks to Alex Sigmund for being here with us. Check out his Instagram the vet eye guy and keep an eye on him. He is really fun. He does great positive content that makes the world better for bets and people, and I always just love to support that.
So anyway, gang, thanks for being here. Take care. I’ll talk to you later. Bye.
