Thread: Medical Mission to Ecuador

Originally Posted by Bunni

D: Thats awesome (especially with the two girls)!

How do you treat the infected eye and retinoblastoma's? Wouldnt the threatment plan be very different from that of someone in the US? Or were you guys around long enough to help manage the treatment for a while?

Unfortunately there really wasn't much we could do in that situation. For all of those patients, the eye was already blind so there really isn't any way to restore the sight (even if they were in the states). If the eye was causing pain for the patient, it would be removed just to provide relief. The best thing that we could have done would be to give them a prosthesis. Unfortunately, we did not have an ocularist along (person who fits/designs prosthetic eyes) so we were not able to do that for this visit. We are trying to find someone who is willing to donate their time/resources to help out these kids.

Originally Posted by Bunni

How'd this project even get set in motion? How'd you get involved with such a group? ... I'd love to go out and help with something like this but theres no organizations that do anything like this near me...

This trip was organized by Vision Health International in coordination with a charitable health organization in Ecuador called FIBUSPAM. I was able to get involved because I am an ophthalmic technician and work with eye doctors on a daily basis. One of our doctors was planning to go on the trip and asked me if I would like to go along. There were people on our trip who had absolutely no medical experience, but just wanted to help, so don't feel like you need to be an RN to come along. I think there is discussion of another trip next year, I'll let you know when I get more info Bunni