I don't feel like writing a lot because I'm a bit tired and I want to do some other things before I go to bed. Today I was in Optometry. Not a lot of translating since the doc and the techs knew how to say all the basic things they needed in order to process simple cases. They kept me on hand in the few cases where they needed more information or when the patient wanted to convey a lot of info to the doctor. Almost everyone wanted sunglasses and eyedrops but they didn't seem to realize that we didn't have enough for everyone to have them for free so we needed to save them for people with an immediate and significant medical need. It even got to the point where I would go out and give a speech to all the people in line about it because everyone who didn't want to leave without eyedrops and sunglasses were backing us up.
I did get to feel really useful, though, when we had a couple of more severe cases. The system for getting more serious cases onto the ship (not boat, as I have been informed by several people) is not organized in a way that made me confident that I could simply hand the patient off so I escorted a few of them through the process to make sure that the people who needed the most help really got it. I guess I felt responsible because over the last few days I have come the conclusion that it is impossible to offer free surgeries and such to people that really need it without having to process a bunch of people whose problems are much more minor. The only solution is to process as many people as possible so you can get to as many important cases as possible. I guess I felt like if I didn't get help for the really sick people then the rest of the work we were doing was not helping us reach our full potential.
Overall it was a good day. We got some really sick people help and we gave glasses to over 150 people. I don't know what I'm doing tomorrow but I hope it's hard work.
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