4-8 June - Last week with Unite For Sight!

This week marks my last week with Unite For Sight and also my one month mark of being in Ghana! I can’t believe my time with Unite For Sight is almost over – I definitely could keep volunteering here and wish I could stay working on my research with them more.

Monday’s outreach was pretty busy, but instead of a ton of patients, we just had a ton of volunteers. Eight volunteers are with Crystal Eye Clinic this week, half new and half old. We split up into pairs so the veterans could train new volunteers at the various stations. Nevertheless, there was just not that much to do and many of us were excessively bored. Oh well. The town where the outreach took place, Teshie, was right on the Atlantic Ocean, so I took a walk in the middle of the rather slow day to go enjoy the waves crashing into the shore.

Tuesday was significantly more eventful, as Matt, Mitch, and I were scheduled to go to the clinic instead of going on the outreach. With clinic days come a much later start for the day (10:30 AM – whoa!). I took advantage of my morning off by:

1.      Writing blog posts for the last week

2.      Getting a phone for the rest of the summer (right now I borrow a phone from Unite For Sight to make local calls).

3.      Attending a “church service” at the guest house with a few volunteers who had the day off. The guest house staff brings in a preacher once a week to give a service to them. It was really interesting!

4.      Watching half an episode of “Lost”.

The day only got better from there. Jerome and John (Crystal Eye Clinic staff members) picked us up at 10:30 and we drove to Crystal, with a random stop at the Accra Mall on the way (Jerome wanted lunch)…which meant I finally got to buy some more pita to make PB & J’s! When we arrived at the clinic, Jerome gave us a brief tour and then we waited outside for about 3 hours before any of the Unite For Sight surgeries began. Around 3 PM, we suited up for surgery observations. Many, many things about operations are different in Ghana than in the States, but perhaps one of the most outrageous thing is that everyone in the operating theatre wears sandals…doesn’t make sense to me, but it seems to work for them!

We got to see a ton of surgeries, including cataract, pterygium, glaucoma, and Steven Johnson’s Syndrome. The first surgery went fine, but during the second one I started feeling really light-headed and had to leave the room for about 30 minutes. After leaving, I was already formulating this post, with long tangents about how I’m so glad I decided medical school wasn’t for me because surgeries always make me dizzy, etc. But instead, I went back into the theatre and ended up watching about 10 more surgeries, with a much clearer head! I really enjoyed watching the surgeries, especially the glaucoma one, during which the ophthalmologist, Dr. Clarke, cut a small flap in the patient’s eye, created a channel for the fluid to leave, and then lightly re-sealed the flap. Dr. Clarke mentioned that a very similar procedure is done for glaucoma in the U.S.

Wednesday’s outreach was pretty uneventful, but Thursday’s was really great. The outreach was in Buduburam Refugee Camp and we screened patients from Liberia, Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Niger, Sierra Leone, and also some Ghanaians who lived in nearby towns. Some of the people had really great stories – one Liberian man had been in Ghana for 14 years and was saving up so he and his family could return to Liberia in December. It was so gratifying to help these people and I’m happy we were able to hold an outreach there! Friday’s outreach was also pretty uneventful, but we did get invited to the Chief’s home to meet with him. Unfortunately, this meeting was not as exciting as it may sound…he spoke to the eye clinic staff in Twi the whole time (about 45 minutes) and no one was translating for us, so the meeting was pretty boring for the volunteers.

So that’s it! Unite For Sight is over and I move to Kumasi tomorrow to start my internship on Monday! Volunteering with Unite For Sight has been an incredible experience. I’ve met outstanding people, from other volunteers to clinic staff to people in the community, learned so much, and really been able to fine tune some research skills. I am so happy I chose to include this experience in my summer. Looking back, there were times over the last 8 months or so that I kept second-guessing why I chose to be so busy this summer, but I’m glad I had enough foresight back in October to undertake such a hectic summer schedule.

On to Kumasi!