Today's agenda wasn't too different than the previous day's agenda, though in quite a different setting. We were doing an eye screening in a rural community about an hour outside of San Benito with native Guatemalan "health promoters". We didn't find a mountain of people waiting for us when we got there, probably because of the remote nature of the tiny village, but it did follow that there was a steady flow of people for the couple of hours that we were there.
There were some routine cases of individuals whose vision had simply worsened with age, naturally. For them, the big smiles they displayed after they put on a free pair of reading glasses was enough to bring great joy to my heart. Their daily lives instantly got a little bit easier because they could again finally see what their hands were doing. I knew quite well that they would not have had the knowledge or resources to go to the store (which would be an hour or more by bus, which also wasn't free.....) and buy themselves a pair of simple reading glasses.
Some of the other cases weren't so routine. There was a man with a big red eye, a woman with a foreign body in her eye, a man with a growth in one eye, and a couple more villagers who needed more than just reading glasses. The most we could offer them was a referral for an evaluation at the Vincent Pescatore Clinica de Ojos, marked as "servicio social" (which meant it would be free, though getting there once again would be the challenge).
I left the rural community wondering what the man with the big red eye would have done if we had not gone to do the jornada. I was wondering how many of the non-routine cases were actually going to make it to the clinic an hour away. And I was thinking about the importance of service to those less fortunate than ourselves.
Christine Garcia, M2
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