NSUCO - The Visionary Fall 2017

Schaefer found the six-story Tianjin hospital very modern and “super high tech. Things I’d only read about in books, I saw first-person,” she said. “Equipment and technology were very state of the art, but the patients themselves were in extreme poverty.” She was soon able to master enough Chinese to work directly with patients. “I wanted to learn some Chinese so I could do exams with a little bit of independence,” Schaefer recalled. “I asked one of the doctors to teach me how to give patients basic instructions so I could do at least a slit-lamp exam. So I was able to tell the patient, ‘Open your eye, blink, look up, look down.’ ” Each month, Schaefer rotated through a different specialty area, experiencing cataract, cornea, glaucoma, and retina surgeries. But her personal interactions, which were mostly with patients, left the most lasting impressions. “I was a bit of a novelty to the patients,” she said with a chuckle. “They would always take out their phones and take pictures of me. They would come up and want to touch my hair. It was always fun to try to speak a little Chinese to them because they didn’t expect it. They would always be pleasantly surprised and then seem very grateful and happy I was making the effort.” For much of her time in Tianjin, Schaefer was the only foreigner in the hospital. Yet, even though her patients never had seen a Westerner, Schaefer found she could bond with them even without a common language. Continued on page 10 Julie Schaefer, O.D., savors a breathtaking view of the sand dunes in Dunhuang, China.