Clinic Blog: 2011 Detroit Clinic Blog

April 27, 2011

Rainy Days and Smooth Sailing

By jpotanko

Today we were greeted by dark clouds and rain as we departed for the clinic site. However, our team spirit and energy would not be dampened on this day. For only our second full day working as a team, our clinic went very very smooth with very little to no disruption. Our team worked very efficiently and effectively which allowed the children to go through the clinic in a timely manner. We saw 264 students today, of which 227 of them needed eyeglasses. That brings our totals to 554 students seen with 480 so far needing eyeglasses.

The students from our schools today brought in Thank You cards that they had made in their class to give us during their time today! How awesome is that! We displayed the cards on some of the doors within the building to show everyone how talented and appreciative they were! Thank you students!

We had one young lady around the age of 11 or 12 who was going through our process today and when it was time for her to see the doctor, she had to squint very badly just to see where to go. She was asked if she had ever worn glasses before, which she replied she didn’t. Our doctor found that she had a very high prescription for near-sightedness for her glasses. She was one of a number of students we saw today that never worn glasses or never had their eyes checked that were in a real need for eyeglasses. Can you imagine the difference these glasses are going to make for them once they are going to be able to actually see correctly without squinting? HUGE DIFFERENCE!

We had another young lady who was waiting to have her eyes dilated. She really didn’t want to have her eyes dilated and was afraid it was going to hurt. One of our doctors, Pam Brown, was able to come over and calm the young lady down and pinkie promising her that the drops wouldn’t hurt. Afterwards the young lady felt so much better and didn’t seem to worry too much about the drops. Thank you Dr. Pam Brown!

We would like to remind you that we are always in need for donated eyeglasses for our International Clinics, so if you have any old eyewear that you are not using, please drop them off at any Lenscrafters, Pearle Vision or Sears Optical so that they may be used. Do not worry about the condition of the eyewear because all donated eyewear will be used in one way or another for the International Clinics. Also our fundraising page is still up and running as well. If you or anyone else is interested in donating, please visit http://onesight.donordrive.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.team&eventID=514&teamID=5074 to donate to our clinic.

Thanks for your reading and support!

Detroit 2011 Team