August 13, 2011

All good things must come to an end…

By jmarshall

Days 10-13 were filled with many more kids.  We revisited Hidden Valley, Hayden Marks, ABC, and Tommy, in that order.  Tuesday and Wednesday were almost 12 hour days- we saw over 500 kids!!!  We were reunited with Maria late Thursday night!  We all terribly missed her and continuously repeated her New York accent (that she claims she doesn't have) by saying the New Yorker's "go ahead" = ga'head!  That's how much we missed you Maria!!!  Tommy was our last day on Friday and we ended this smallest camp early, around 2:30-3.  We had to deep clean Eyeleen and get her ready for her trip to Atlanta!  All of the equipment had to be cleaned, as well as all the frames sorted and restocked to get ready for the next set of kids Eyeleen is destined to help.  Dawn pinned Scott and Jennifer pinned Dr. Bill as we had to say goodbye to them early in the day.  :( It was a very emotional day for all of us.

Our Last Night Together... After a batch of cookies as big as your head from the 84 Diner from Dawn, we all headed back to the hotel to refresh before dinner.  We all ate dinner at the same diner (so scrumptious!) and then quickly headed up a dirt road up the mountain behind Camp Tommy.  We had to get there before sunset!  Dawn reserved this spot in January.  At the end of the dirt road there was a little shelter called Perkin Mountain Shelter.  We knew there was a big rock that overlooked the Hudson River Valley, but we didn't know exactly what we'd be in for.  We didn't see much around the shelter and had to head up a small hill to get to the rock.  The view as we got to the top was breathtaking!  It was a perfect picture opportunity and we took about an hour watching the sunset and snapping our last photos with each other.  As the darkness fell we stoked the fire.  We had to make sure it was bright.  Tom from the reservation left us some firewood with a picture of a mountain lion they had spotted that week with a note on the back that said, "Vision Van Crew, Keep the fire burning!  It will keep the mountain lion in the dark!  Enjoy!"  We all settled in around the campfire and Dawn made some closing remarks.  She gave us some final numbers.  In our two weeks in Fishkill, we saw 1605 patients, did 835 exams, and made 792 pairs of glasses!!!  There were still about 40 pairs to be made with lenses we didn't have in stock that the LC people split among them to take back to their own labs.  Dawn congratulated us on the work we did and again reiterated how unique this clinic is.  It has one of the smallest teams (we had 13) but it has the best opportunity to form close bonds with our clinic members.  We all fell into a routine quickly.  We knew what needed to get done and stepped in where we were needed, no matter what our assigned job might have been that day.  Fishkill 2 was a well-oiled machine!!!  Some of us made a few comments about how much we enjoyed ourselves and giving the gift of sight to all these kids in need.  We ended by giving each other our clinic pins and saying our last goodbyes.  We wouldn't have much time in the morning as we were leaving for the airport at 4:20 am!!!  Most of our flights left around 6am.  We all went back to our homes, in Edmonton, Seattle, all over Ohio, San Antonio, Tampa, Richmond, Knoxville, Toronto, Mississippi... with memories of each other and these kids from all over NYC that we will never forget.

1 Comment

  1. Jennifer says:

    well said Jen! I miss the “Fishkill cult” already!!

    Posted on Sun Aug 14, 2011 9:01 am EST

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