Eyeworld

63 EW INTERNATIONAL July 2015 Editors' note: Dr. Bowden has no finan- cial interests related to his comments. Contact information Bowden: bbowden@eyeforgod.com Dr. Bowden began his career as a general ophthalmologist but switched to oculoplastics in 1990. He hadn't performed cataract surgery since making that transi- tion, but in 2010, he painstakingly learned how to perform phacoemul- sification all over again so that he could do charity cataract surgery abroad. "I really struggled at first," he said. "I thought 'Piece of cake, I'm a great surgeon, I can do it all,' but I couldn't. Now I feel totally con- fident doing cataracts again, but it was very humbling at first." That year, he spent 5 weeks performing charity cataract sur- gery with Gansu Inc., an organi- zation that provided eyecare to underserved populations in western China. "We worked in a pop up trailer," Dr. Bowden recalled. "They didn't have the facilities there, so we took a trailer and adapted it so that we could do cataract surgery in the trail- er. Then we took those same trailers and moved them to Guatemala and the Philippines." In April 2014, Dr. Bowden made his fifth trip to Guatemala, perform- ing surgery in one of the same trail- ers that he had used in China. "It's kind of cool that it goes around and continues to help another country," he said. Today, Dr. Bowden spends about a quarter of his time travelling and doing charity eyecare. In addition to relearning phaco, he learned how to do small incision cataract sur- gery (SICS), which is more feasible to perform in developing countries than phaco. "It's pretty amazing to see how that works—that we can do third- world country surgery and it has the same outcome as phaco," he said. For surgeons who want to start doing volunteer work, Dr. Bowden recommends starting with an estab- lished organization that can easily coordinate all of the logistics. For those who are afraid to take time away from a lucrative practice, Dr. Bowden's message is that the money will always come back to you. "The biggest challenge is your decision to start doing it," he said. "If we just give a little bit, then you get a little bit. But if you give a lot, you get a lot. I challenge anyone who's afraid that they're going to lose money doing it to go and do it, and they'll see that they don't ever lose money. "As we help others, and we are servants, then we are blessed," he continued. "And when we think it's about us, we are the furthest from what we can be and what we should be." EW

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