Dia Tres – Clinic

The rubber met the road today at clinic. We saw 3,161 people! Hurray! It was also the most challenging day for me thus far. I was stationed at the autorefractor in the morning and then at the inventory management system in the afternoon.

The autorefractor requires patience and the ability to work something like a joystick that focuses on the pupil of the eye to take measurements (i.e. your prescription). I’m not so much about patience and I’ve never been skilled at video games so the autorefractor was not easy for me. If you’ve ever had an eye exam, this is the machine you look into with eyes wide open (abra sus ojos – I must have said this 500 times today) and stare at a little red house (la casita rojas) without blinking so a reading can be taken.

The cool thing is, you get a black and white and up-close view of a person’s eye so you see cataracts and other disorders which are not so cool. When you’re trying to center the little white dot in a little box and the person has severe cataracts or other issues, it comes up as “no target.” The first time this happened, I just thought it was user error seeing as I needed to get used to using the machine. Luckily, Dr. Scott was nearby to explain to me that this happens when the person cannot see for various reasons and the machine has nothing to focus on. In this particular case, the woman was most likely blind. The translator tugged her away from the machine and Dr. Scott told me to look at her eyes. They were a cloudy, milky blue. Sad. But I learned a lot about the eye from Dr. Scott and the other docs who were giving me pointers on using the machine.

Clearly, my forte is in dispensing or picking but we all take turns at the various stations and part of the mission is about challenging yourself and pushing yourself. Which also happened at IMS (inventory management system) where we enter the doctor’s prescriptions into the computer and attempt to find the best match among the recycled glasses. Let’s just say it’s not an exact science and exact matches are rare. When they happen, it’s worth a big cheer. We do our best to find the best prescription for the person which requires a little optical knowledge and some – choke, gulp – algebra. Yeah. That’s right. Amy doing some math. This is never a good thing. I caught on after awhile and the program does most of the work for you but there are times you have to make a tough call between an Rx that is good in some areas and not so much of a match in others. It makes you feel bad knowing that this is the best you can give and the person isn’t getting something that matches their unique eyes but it’s better than no glasses at all.

But all of the challenges are worth it when you get to witness your friend Erin discovering a match for her Uncle Pete’s glasses. Actually, the discovery was made by teammates Mitch and Dr. Max but Erin was there to place her Uncle Pete’s glasses on Jose’s face. Check her blog for details.

My dad’s glasses and those of my nieces and nephews and a few friends are all awaiting their own special moments and special people. It could be tomorrow, it could be next week. There are plenty of clinic days and hours left for my own personal “mission magic” to happen.