We all have white spaces in our lives- things we hope to get done while we’re on this earth. This March, I was fortunate to be able to fill one of these white spaces in my professional career. With my youngest child college-bound and a new associate to cover my private practice, I was able to join an eye mission to the Dominican Republic with a group known as Volunteer Health Program (VHP)
http://www.volunteerhealthprogram.org. VHP was started by an ophthalmologist and his wife fifteen years ago. Each spring this group, completely self sponsored and now 40 people strong, composed of ophthalmologists, internists, nurses, anesthesiologist, and lay people, sets out for Santiago, Dominican Republic. In March we set out for this year's
mission.
Once in the Dominican Republic, the Mission ILAC (Institute for Latin American Concerns) complex was our home for one week. During this time we turned it into an efficient and productive medical and surgical eye center, seeing two hundred patients a day. Over the years the group amassed a prodigious amount of medical equipment and an impressive inventory of glasses to make this clinic unique in this rural area.
My week in the mission brought me back to my days in summer camp, the same instant bonding and camaraderie with people, on a common mission: to bring the best eye care to an area whose indigent people often never saw a doctor and had no access to health care, let alone an optical store.
After landing in Santiago, we were greeted at the airport by mission workers who drove us about town and cooked for us. Our sleeping quarters or casitas were also reminiscent of summer camp, complete with bunk beds and mosquito netting. I was lucky; I only shared a casita with two lovely doctors.
In the morning the first bell rang at six AM and served as a wake-up call. We kept a rigid and exhausting twelve hour/day schedule. After breakfast, we were off to morning clinic which began at 7AM daily. It was heartwarming to enter the clinic area each day being greeted by over two hundred trusting, grateful and hopeful patients. The day was filled with a flurry of activities. I was mesmerized by the systems in place to screen and treat each patient. Many patients who had surgery remained in the complex overnight as it was too far for them to travel home and return for a post-op visit the next day.
All in all, our team treated almost 1000 patients that week in March, an impressive number some would argue, but unfortunately, only a dent in the needs of this community. Sadly, we had
to turn away many patients who desperately needed routine surgery as our OR time was already full midweek. They were told to return next year.
Tikkun Olam, repairing the world, is a core Jewish value. I feel blessed to have chosen a profession which enables me to improve people's vision and in a small way contribute to tikkun olam.
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