Photo By Master Sgt. Paul Tuttle | Petty Officer 3rd Class Jojo Manansala selects a lens blank before grinding a...... read more read more
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By Sgt. 1st Class Paul Tuttle
1st Sustainment Command (Theater)
CAMP ARIFJAN, Kuwait – What do you do when your glasses break and you're heading out to Iraq tomorrow? Why, go to the optometrist's office at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, of course.
It's a full-service shop crammed into three little rooms at the Troop Medical Clinic annex of the Expeditionary Medical Facility.
"Vision ready is mission ready," said Cmdr. Karen Kato, an optometrist who heads the only military eye care provider in Kuwait. Kato received her doctorate from the Illinois College of Optometry and has several years experience under her belt.
"We provide eye care services to coalition forces. Not only for eyeglasses," she said, "but for complete eye care."
Kato's patients include service members from Great Britain, Australia and South Korea among others, as well as U.S. forces. She sees patients from Camps Virginia and Buehring and every other location where troops are stationed in Kuwait – and even as far away as Qatar and Djibouti.
All receive the benefits of a full range of care.
"We do routine eye exams to check for any visual deficiencies or ocular pathology," said Kato, a native of Libertyville, Ill. "About 25 percent of our services are for urgent-type care – traumatic injuries – that type of thing."
Sports injuries account for most of these cases, she continued.
"Usually the injuries are from recreational activities," she said. "Someone gets hit in the eye with a football or softball or gets a finger in the eye playing basketball."
The facility is a cost saver for the Department of Defense. Patients who need eye care would have to be referred to local civilian doctors otherwise.
"We see a lot of patients here, so if they were to go on the outside, it probably would be very costly," Kato said. Costs add up, "... when you think about transportation, time away from training – so not only just in money, but man-hours away from training and man-hours away from the mission."
Of course, exams for glasses account for a lot of her work. The clinic provides the old standard military eyeglasses – jokingly referred to by some as "BCGs," or "birth control glasses" for their plain, brown, heavy frames – but the inventory now has more popular wire-frame glasses.
If the prescription is in the stock inventory, a patient simply waits while the technician cuts the lenses and he or she can walk away with a new pair of glasses. The wait time is usually 15 minutes or less.
Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael Tuck Jr. thinks this is comparable to anything found in the civilian world and is first-rate.
Tuck, from Birmingham, Ala., had his glasses in hand before he left the area right after he finished his exam.
"This service is second to none," he said. "When they make glasses, they have a quick turn-around, and that's great service."
Staff Sgt. Rennick Beneby, of Fort Lee, Va., agrees. He's been there three times.
"I've had a few replacements because of the environment, and I've had a couple of mishaps," he wryly admitted. Pairs of his glasses have been run over by a vehicle, been broken during physical training and a pair even tumbled down the stairs.
"Back at Fort Lee, in order to get glasses, it's a long, drawn-out process," he said. He has an unusual prescription, so it takes a bit longer to get his glasses, but he's received them here in about a week's time.
"The Navy personnel here are efficient, courteous and very professional," Beneby said.
He works in the next building as the non-commissioned officer in charge of Acute Care Plans. "Whenever my glasses are ready, they bring them over to me," he said. "I'm pretty appreciative of all their work and efforts."
Kato pointed out that the clinic also makes inserts for protective eyewear.
"The commands buy (their) Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen ballistic eyewear," Kato said. "What a lot of Soldiers don't know is that we can make their inserts for that eyewear."
Anyone who needs corrective lenses can get inserts in their prescription for all their protective gear, including gas masks.
If you're a pilot or driver who needs sunglasses, they have a tinting process that makes them too.
One of their newest acquisitions is a computerized machine that grinds multi-focal lenses. If you wear bifocals, it can take as little as 30 to 45 minutes to produce a pair.
Petty Officer 3rd Class Jojo Manansala, a Navy corpsman, does just that and more.
Manansala is from the Philippines, but now calls Honolulu, Hawaii, home. He's the guy who makes, fits, fixes and tunes up glasses.
To become an optical fabricator for the Navy, a candidate must first graduate from Corpsman Basic School, and then pass a six-month optician's course before he or she begins their craft.
It is his attention to detail that produces the high quality products for which the clinic is known.
Seemingly little things, such as the distance between pupils or the height of the line for bifocals, are of critical importance for a pair of glasses to fit properly.
Manansala carefully selects each lens blank – large, round pieces of finished lens material ground to a certain strength – and cuts and forms them into the shape of the lens that fits into glasses frames.
If the prescription isn't in stock, they have a machine that can grind and polish a lens from scratch. Most often, this machine is used to make bifocals because it's difficult to stock all the many of combinations of prescriptions.
"You have to always watch the pressure on the lens holder," he said, referring to the machine that grinds and polishes bifocal lenses. "If the air pressure is wrong, the prescription won't be right."
The clinic sees around 10 to 12 scheduled patients a day, but walk-ins can sometimes double that number.
Kato estimates they see between 350 to 400 patients a month. That's a lot for a three-person operation.
Soldiers and Sailors who go through the readiness phase of their deployment sometimes get glasses that aren't their prescription.
"A guy walks in that can't see because he got his glasses mixed up. He got the wrong ones. He sees the doctor and we get him new glasses," he said.
Petty Officer 2nd Class Eric Cole, a hospital corpsman, is the leading petty officer in charge of the clinic. The Paragould, Ark., native schedules the clinic's patients.
The first step is a briefing to get basic patient information. Problems vary with different groups of personnel because contractors as well as military receive care.
"You want to find out what's going on. Is it a physical? Do they have a pencil stuck in their eye?
Do they need glasses?" he said. "We see diabetics. We see glaucoma patients. There's a full range out there."
He says exams run from 30 to 45 minutes. That adds up to a lot of time spent seeing just scheduled patients. Once again, there are walk-ins too.
"That's the other trick to being out here. We've had to implement a walk-in basis," Cole said. "We've had many units come in – 'I'm going to Iraq tomorrow. I need a pair of glasses to see,' – so we take them in."
They work six days a week – Monday through Saturday – however, Sundays fill up too.
"I'd say the doc gets called in 50 percent of the time on her day off," he said. "We've made plenty of glasses after hours."
Service is their biggest goal Cole said.
"We give 100 percent. Our biggest goal is you get your glasses five minutes after you've been seen. We always say we're a little better than Lenscrafters," he quipped.
Kato emphasized protecting eyes.
"The military issues ballistic eyewear. If you go up north (to Iraq) especially, wear it," she said.
"Not only does it offer you ballistic protection, but also ultraviolet protection. UV rays from the sun can cause long-term damage to your eyes. It's like sunscreen for your eyes," she said. "Wear your protective eyewear. I can't say that enough."
Service members should heed her advice. Otherwise, they'll be back to the clinic sooner than they expect.
| Date Taken: | 08.17.2007 |
| Date Posted: | 08.17.2007 11:14 |
| Story ID: | 11867 |
| Location: | CAMP ARIFJAN, KW |
| Web Views: | 369 |
| Downloads: | 140 |
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