We realized we left you hanging on Wednesday through Friday but things were busy and there was no time to post a blog, so here's our attempt to keep you in the loop after the fact.

The clinic ended on Friday, Nov 6. but our memories of a wonderful experience are still vivid in our minds. Here are some of the things we experienced that last three days of the Cleveland Clinic:

--We had technical difficultly with a particular style of frame that was not traceable (no brands mentioned here, but Gardner, our Oakley rep on the clinic, knows what we are talking about, hehe). Due to this, we were not able to manufacture about 60 frames on Wednesday. We had to wait for them to be sent out to another lab to be completed. We did not let that stop us!

--We saw a girl who was legally blind in one eye (-16.25 sphere) due to a congenital issue called caliboma. We bumped her up to the front of the line to ensure she would receive glasses right away. We ended up giving her 2 pairs of frames due to such a high prescription. We were all in awe that someone could go through life without having had a pair of glasses and not able to see out of one eye.

--A little girl had been wearing quite the wrong prescription for quite some time, we surmised she was wearing someone else's glasses. Needless to say, we were able to get her the right prescription so she could see without damaging her eyes further!

--Wednesday we saw a little boy named Alex and his classmate Jade. Both were defiant and scared of the clinic. Alex was so defiant with the tonometer, that we gave him a "pass" to skip it. Little did he know that one of the next stations was the "dilation station." It took him over 20 minutes to get up the courage to go through with this. After we did one eye, the entire clinic cheered, which then gave him the gumption to get the second eye dilated. Everyone gave him high-fives and he was so excited to have gotten through what he perceived as torture. And, not to leave his classmate Jade out, she was equally defiant with the tonometer and got a "get out of jail free" card but also took her quite some time to get dilated. Once we passed those kids on to the autorefractor, we felt our day was done! We were all so excited to have helped Alex and Jade along on their vision journey.

--This week we had also seen a group of special needs children. This also tugged at our heart strings. Some were physically and mentally challenged but some were also hearing impaired, which brought on some challenges having no interpreter. We were all drawing from our limited knowledge of sign language and just pointed and showing them what they had to do. There was even an autistic child in a wheel chair we referred to a doctor's office so he could get one-on-one attention in a less chaotic atmosphere. We'll never forget this child's infectious laugh!

--As Thursday rolled around, we were beginning to see the exhaustion on many clinic members' faces. We had 2 members sick that day but they kept on working as if nothing was wrong! The week was beginning to take a toll. No rest for the weary. We also had the pinning ceremony and silent auction to look forward to, which brings me to....

--Thursday night! Once we had finished a long day of about 290 kids, we were able to go back to the hotels and rest a little. We had a reception, pinning ceremony and silent auction, always a highlight of each regional clinic. We raised over $2000 that night alone for OneSight! Clinic members brought things like homemade jewelery, hand-painted OneSight wine glasses (courtesy of Leslie) and Oakley glasses with OneSight etched on the lenses (courtesy Gardner). Dr. Bill auctioned off 10 lbs of fresh gulf shrimp from Alabama shipped right to your door. Handmade OneSight bracelets were also popular items (courtesy of Janet).

--Friday came and we all busted a move to get kids through the clinic in time for some of our clinic members to catch early shuttles back to the airport. The great thing is that by the time the shuttles started arriving, the clinic had seen the last school passing through the last stations. We were able to get the entire clinic packed up by 3:00, probably a new record according to some clinic alumni!

We helped approximately 1500 children in Cleveland receive the gift of sight thanks to such a wonderful team. This will be yet another clinic we won't forget. Until next year....