Clinic Blog: 2011 Detroit Clinic Blog
May 4, 2011
School Dispensing Trips & Crazy Hat Invasion
By jpotanko
Today we were able to enjoy some serious sunshine throughout the day. Sure beats all the grey clouds and rain we have been dealing with during our stay here. We saw 276 kids today with 240 of them needing eyeglasses, a 86.9% need. So far for the entire clinic, we have seen a total of 1937 kids with 1651 of them needing eyeglasses, a 85.2% of need. The impact we have made as a team has been tremendous for this area and all of these students that have come through our clinic doors.
Today was Crazy Hat Day at the clinic for the core team members. Desha and Lori, our co-fundraising captains, made a number of hats to wear for today. All they asked for was a $5.00 donation to our team page for each hat. Desha and Lori made various hats, rangings from tiaras to crowns to the unique and unusual. Others brought their own hats to wear. Those hats included floral hats, baseball caps, polka dotted top hats to Packer Cheeseheads (which drew friendly heckling from the locals here in Detroit) Crazy Hat day is done to help loosen things up for both staff and students alike to ensure everyone involved was having fun during the day.
This day was also big for us as we sent a team out to start dispensing some of the glasses we had made on site to the students. The teams were selected based on nomination from the other core team members on why they should go and how it would impact them from experiencing this. Todays team consisted of Greg Martin, one of main controllers, Chris, our photography captain, Krista, a member of oiu production team, Elizabeth, one of our team leaders, and Odette, a clinic coordinator from South Africa. Odette has been here the last few days learning the process we do here in the states so she can start similar program in South Africa.
Our dispensing team visited three schools today and started dispensing glasses out to some of the students who had came through earlier in the clinic. There was a little six year old girl who was moving around with one of the teachers that our team didnt initially realize that she was one of the students there for dispensing. She had never worn glasses before and needed a Rx for a +4.00 with a -3.00 cylinder. She had already picked out a bright bliue plastic frame earlier for her glasses. The moment she put the glasses on, her eyes lit up and she had a huge grin on her face. She was very excited and happy to be able to actually see with straining and squinting her eyes. Now she got to see everything she was missing out on not being able to see correctly.
One of the students who came in today was Michael. Michael is an 11 year old boy who was very apprehensive of the entire process. He came up to our tonometer machines, or "puff of air" machines and ended up not liking the test at all. He became very upset and wasnt happy. He was suppose to have his eyes dilated, however Caviniona decided not to have his eyes dilated. Caviniona walked with him up to the auto-refraction machines, which are very similar in design to the tonometers. He started to becomne upset again, but Caviniona showed him what the test actually did. Michael ended up calming down and gave hugs to everyone at the end. He even went as far as saying he was sorry for his behavior, even though he never did anything wrong. Glad to see he ended up enjoying the process today.
Allen was a 9 year old little boy who came into our clinic today. Desha worked with him during the process, helping him be more at ease and explained all the tests to him so he knew what was going to happen. During the process, he recited Dr Suess's Green Eggs and Ham to her while going from test to test. At the end of the day, Allen asked Desha to sit with during lunch and even offered her half of his snack and called Desha his new best friend.
We are always taking donations for the program. If you wish to donate, please visit our page at http://onesight.donordrive.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.team&eventID=514&teamID=5074
Thanks!
Detroit Team 2011
Dispensing pics and Crazy Hats.
1 Comment
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Krista says:
The girl in image 8 and the boy in image 10 came in the week previous and there is a picture of the two of them picking out their glasses in the frame room. I just loved that we have the two pictures.
Posted on Sun May 8, 2011 7:38 pm EST