Optometry students travel to Mexico

Tears falling from her eyes, the woman thanked Melissa Leniuk and told her she was an angel from heaven.

Leniuk, vice president-elect for Volunteer Optometric Services to Humanity, had given the woman glasses, and for the first time she could see.

“She didn’t even know the world was clear,” Leniuk said. “She was like, ‘This is what I could be seeing?’”

Leniuk was one of the students who traveled with VOSH last year to an IU-affiliated optometry clinic in Silao, Mexico. Thirty VOSH students left for Mexico on Saturday and will return to Bloomington on Feb. 14.

Once in Mexico, the group will work at the clinic for about seven or eight hours a day from Sunday through Thursday and see about 500 patients each day.

“It’s really amazing what you can do, despite (the) language barrier,” said Tanya Jones, VOSH vice president.

Although several translators help at the clinic, VOSH Secretary Jennifer Hill organized a brief Spanish lecture for the group to learn basic words and a few optometry terms in Spanish.

Leniuk said she couldn’t speak Spanish well during the trip last year and kept a list of Spanish words under her clipboard to help her feel less lost in conversation.

Nursing students from the area help patients fill out history forms before they receive basic eye exams from the VOSH volunteers.

“It’s very crowded. You have to get past the noise,” Jones said. “It’s not the perfect dark exam room.”

The eye exams include preliminary testing and check overall health by looking into the back of the eye.

Different diseases such as high blood pressure and diabetes can be detected by looking at the back of the eye, said Kacie Monroe, VOSH president-elect.

VOSH President Michelle DePeau said she saw eye diseases in Mexico that she might never see again. She said the patients made her realize how many people take eye care for granted in the United States.

Monroe said one woman received her glasses and went outside to find her son so he could thank Monroe.

“They get glasses for the first time at age 80, and it changes their world,” Hill said.

Hill said the patients often don’t take the time to receive eye care, and if they notice something wrong with their eyes, they just accept it.

The patients travel to the clinic on buses. Some start traveling as early as 3 a.m., said Jericho Quick, VOSH treasurer. Jones said the patients are willing to wait six to eight hours for an eye exam.

A computer database helps VOSH students find the best glasses for each patient.

The glasses are prescription and are donated by the Lions Club. In addition to receiving a pair of glasses, some patients receive sunglasses.

Hill said VOSH members noticed a large amount of cataracts and UV-related diseases last year and decided to hold a drive so sunglasses could be handed out at the clinic this year.

VOSH members collected about 1,000 pairs of sunglasses in their hometowns and in the Bloomington area.

“You definitely see people in need,” Jones said. “You see how people really live in rural Mexico.”