Unruh serves eye patients on Panama trip
By JENNIFER WILSON
News editor
Barb Unruh remembers the first morning she stepped off the bus at the Panama City health clinic.
"There was a never-ending line of people," she said. "There was always a line that you could not see the end of."
Unruh never had a shortage of patients to see at the clinic. She was working as part of a team of Kansas optometrists, bringing eye care to the needy of Panama City, Panama. She spent a little over a week there, returning March 18.
Unruh works at Greene Vision Group of Hillsboro, and it's been her dream to travel with a group from VOSH — Volunteer Optometric Services for Humanity. And she especially wanted to travel with Dr. Norman Abrams, an optometrist she used to work with. Abrams has served with VOSH several times in other countries.
"I've always wanted to do that," Unruh said.
So Friday, March 8, she boarded the plane in Wichita with 20 other workers and optometrists from Kansas and began her journey to Panama City — a packed metropolis that's a world away from the wide-open spaces of Durham, where Unruh lives with her husband and two daughters.
They arrived in the city Friday evening, and after a day of sightseeing her group set up their eye clinic inside a health clinic in San Miguelito. "Little St. Michael" is one of the poorer suburbs of Panama City, Unruh said.
And for the rest of the week, from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., workers at the clinic saw as many patients as they could — the average was 417 a day. Patients came in with a wide range of eye problems — some had very bad cataracts, while others just needed a new pair of glasses, Unruh said.
Clinic workers made sure that those who needed eye surgery would get the medical attention they needed by a local doctor.
"They made sure that they got follow-up care," she said.
Each day the Panamanians lined up early to receive their "ticket" before all the places were gone. One woman she saw at 2 in the afternoon said she'd been waiting in line since 2 that morning, Unruh said.
Unruh's main job was to dispense glasses. There were more than 4,000 pairs of donated glasses at the clinic.
"It was a challenge," she said.
And the Panamanians weren't strangers to the eyeglass fashions of today — many didn't want to wear the large frames that aren't in style in America.
"They didn't want 'grande' glasses," Unruh said, laughing. "They wanted 'chiquita' (small) glasses."
English interpreters from a nearby school were invaluable to the group, Unruh said. She didn't speak much Spanish before leaving on the trip.
"By the end of the week, I could pretty much understand what they were saying," she said.
What impressed her most about the more than 2,000 people she saw was their generosity.
"The people seemed more friendly," she said. "The people that we serviced were grateful, but some didn't want grande glasses!"
One man in particular that left an impression on Unruh was an older gentleman that came in for new glasses. The frames she gave him weren't too stylish, but he was grateful for them and told her "God bless you" over and over.
"We got blessed a lot," Unruh said.
Others would promise to pray for the workers on a daily basis — because they'd been a blessing to them, she said.
Unruh is grateful to her co-workers at Greene Vision Group, who took over some of her duties while she was away, and to the company who sponsored her trip.
"I would do it again in a heartbeat," Unruh said.
