Mission Trip

Last week I was in Tela, Honduras and Roatan, Honduras on a mission trip with the UAB School of Optometry. Tela is a small city with hotels and restaraunts and a pretty beach...not as beautiful as our beaches! We (6 doctors and 19 students) did eye exams for 4 days and saw 1200 patients! I was completely exhausted and had some serious cankles! I am still recovering! :) I am so proud of everyone on the trip...I am so lucky to know such wonderful caring people! I loved Tela, but in Roatan I felt a little isolated. Roatan is a 36 km island that is a 1.5 hour ferry ride from the Honduras mainland...the power goes out on the entire island at least a few hours a day...and the water goes out too! We stayed at a missionary hotel where our bathroom was the size of a small closet, there were bugs, cold showers, and group dinners that to say the least were not very appetizing! :) The people of Roatan are really poor and an entire family of 6 or more will live in a house the size of our bathroom! We had a patient who was blind in one eye and almost blind in the other with very high eye pressure who needed laser surgery...she is 32 years old with 4 children under age 10! We all pitched in and gave money to have her flown to the capital city to one of the few ophthalmologists in the whole country! She was so grateful! Hopefully that will save what little sight she has left so she can take care of her children. In spite of her circumstances she is so happy! It just made me realize how much I take for granted! One of my patients kept talking about how comfortable my scrubs looked and how hot it is when he works outside so I gave him a pair of my scrubs...He was so happy, absolutely thrilled about a simple pair of scrubs! He came back an hour later and brought me a cantaloupe and some mangos! So sweet! I also had a man with glaucoma so terrible that he fell down the steps at the clinic because he couldn´t see them! I gave him a supply of medicine to maintain the little sight that he has. And my favorite patient of the week...a 5 year old boy who is so nearsighted he has never seen anything! When we put his glasses on he seemed overwhelmed because he could actually see his mother´s face for the first time in his life! Extreme optometry baby! I love my job and I am thankful for the opportuinity to serve others. Already looking forward to next year!