Small Up Yuhself

   Since I last posted, we have completed another big surgery week.  Dr. Stahl and his team from Ohio arrived on the 6th and we did cataracts for 6 days, 143 eyes!!  It was so great having a team of experienced nurses, scrub techs, and surgeons.  I learned a lot about how different and how much more difficult the eyes are down here and my Jamaican team realized how much more work doing cataract surgery requires.  There is a lot to it!  We still have a ton of training to do before I start operating on cataracts with just my Jamaican team, but we are working on it.  In the meantime, we are continuing to remove growths on the eyes - 5 done today - and have started doing injections to treat diabetes and macular degeneration.  I am very proud of everyone down here working together to get us functioning like a full-fledged eye clinic.    In the meantime, the girls have started school and are into their second week.  They are still m...

   Well, we have officially hit the month mark here in Jamaica.  A lot has gone on, and I feel like I have barely had time to breathe.  A fabulous team from Ohio left after doing a BUNCH of pterygium surgery and helping me and my Jamaican team prepare to continue to operate.  Last week, we had our first official Jamaican team OR day - no scrub nurses or techs from the US - which was a first for the surgery center!  I was so proud of our team.  We did 9 pterygium cases and another wonderful oculoplastics specialist who dropped by the center joined in and helped with surgery and clinic patients.  We are looking forward to Dr. Wester coming back in a few months for more eyelid and orbit cases.  So now, the OR is officially up and running with weekly cases.  Another team comes in at the end of this week for cataract surgery.  Meanwhile, every day in clinic I am seeing patient after patient with blinding eye disease from either cataracts...