A flash of light in a gray world
Patients feel known. They have been returning to this well for decades. When the brothers stroll down the hall to chat before exams, no one is surprised. The personal is part of the treatment.
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The heart of the place might be the three-ring binder on a corner table. It doesn't draw the eye like Arizona landscapes, but if the eye isn't dilated, 35 years of photos and grainy articles offer a course in personal contact.
Many of the front pieces are about the brothers' local volunteerism. Rotary Club presidency. Boys & Girls Club scholarship donations. Golf tournaments and baseball games, too numerous to count, enjoyably played for charity. Then there is volunteerism farther away: the annual trip to Egypt, where corneas are like sandpaper from unfiltered sun and desert storms, and the country averages two ophthalmologist per 100,000 patients. The clinic where they volunteer is rudimentary, so they bring some of their own equipment and supplies. One brother arrived expecting to assist the local optometrist working that day. Then he discovered he was the optometrist that day.
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More toward the middle of the binder, handwritten cards and typed notes are pressed between plastic sleeves. A postcard is mailed from some warm island after the office faxed a lens prescription remedying one of those invariable vacation mishaps. Thank you for the after-hour appointment on your way out the door for Thanksgiving. Thank you for seeing my mother the day I called, even though she isn't your patient. Thank you for your care. Here's a poem that reminds me of you.
Then there are photos from holiday staff parties — decades of restaurants, children in dress clothes. None of the children are children anymore, but updates are available during vision exams. As expected, they are doing well.
To be clear, the office is fully efficient: Glasses come in on time, imaging machines are modern, the well water is of highest quality. And to be equally clear, a family business cannot change the problems waiting outside the door (though, for what it's worth, you can see the problems better when you leave). But there's something central about humanness here. The brothers are just a flash of light in a gray world. Light is heartening, though, if only you know where to look.
Elissa Ely is a psychiatrist.
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