Megan "The Craver" Provence-Perry

This mission trip to Nicaragua was the second mission trip I’ve ever been on.  With that being said, I don’t think having prior exposure to the conditions of those living in the particular conditions we visited gets any easier to witness.  I’d like to think that even if I were around such conditions on a daily basis, I wouldn’t become numb to it.  There was one particular patient encounter that really affected me.  On our last day of brigades when we were about to close down, there was a man in his mid-seventies who sat in my chair at the retinoscopy/ocular health station.  His VAs were approximately 20/200 in both eyes at distance and near, so I was expecting him to need a pretty strong prescription.  I performed ret, and barely got any prescription at all.  Once I started looking into the back of his eyes to see what was going on, it became very obvious.  The man had extremely dense cataracts!  We had to dilate his eyes in order for me to see around them, and it still took quite a bit of manipulation to even view his optic nerves to make sure they were healthy (they were).  I know cataracts are common—we’re all going to get them, just like gray hair and wrinkles, if we’re fortunate to live long enough.  What’s particularly sad about this story is this man didn’t even feel the need to see our optometry team!  He thought his poor vision was just due to the fact that he was older!  In fact, a member of our team had to convince him to let us examine his eyes!  After my examination when we told him he could have his vision restored after removal of the cataracts from a local ophthalmologist, he was elated!  

The story of this man just further reiterated to me how very blessed we are to live in the US and to have access to the best health care in the world--Medicare pays for cataract surgery in the US!  I thank God for the opportunity to travel to Nicaragua to serve those in need.  It was such a blessing to travel to Nicaragua to not only provide the much needed eye care to so many patients, but to witness the display of God’s love from everyone involved—the patients, our team, and our wonderful missionary hosts at Corner of Love!  Not only were we impacting the hearts of our patients, but our patients were most definitely touching our hearts as well!