When Tamara Fountain was a little girl, she had one dream.
“I was totally going to become a military pilot, just like my dad,” Fountain said.
When Fountain was a baby, her dad was a test pilot with the U.S. Air Force. He would later become a commercial pilot for Northwest Airlines, but Fountain’s dream of following in his foosteps was dashed around age seven, when she got glasses.
“I became nearsighted when I was around seven or eight, and I got my glasses and I saw clearly for the first time, but my dad had to break the news to me that it had eliminated my option for a career in military aviation,” Fountain said. At the time, the U.S. military had specific vision requirements to become a pilot and corrective surgery was not available.
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In a twist of fate, Fountain ended up studying to become an ophthalmologist. Four months ago, her dreams came full circle when she performed eye surgery on an airplane.
“It's an amazing experience to be able to operate on an airplane,” Fountains aid.
The ophthalmic teaching hospital built on board a retrofitted MD-10 aircraft is run by the non-profit, Orbis International.
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“Orbis builds strong and sustainable eye care systems globally, that put treatment and prevention within reach,” said Derek Hodkey, President & CEO of Orbis International.
Hodkey says about one billion people worldwide are living with vision loss.
“It's really sad because of that billion people, 90% of that vision loss around the world is completely preventable. And the only challenge that that exists is access to care,” Hodkey said.
That’s where volunteers like Dr. Fountain come in. She spent one week in Zambia in October 2023.
“We had staff from six continents during the time that I was there. So it's an international effort, and it's a teaching effort. Again, the anesthesiologists are teaching the local anesthesiologists. The nursing staff is teaching the local nursing staff,” Fountain said.
“It is about training people within their communities to deliver care in their communities,” said Hodkey.
Fountain says teaching surgical techniques in the airplane operating room was surreal.
“It's a wide body airplane, so the operating room is not as big as what we would have here in the States, but it's certainly big enough to do everything that we need,” Fountain said.
While she may not have become a military pilot like her dad, Dr. Fountain says there are plenty of parallels between aviation & medicine.
“They're both highly regulated industries where the training is long, and the cost of failure is great,” Fountain said. “So it's been nice over the years to appreciate those parallels and to apply some of the things that my dad talked about in aviation for pilots to stay safe and keep their passengers safe, and for me to treat my patients and keep them safe as well.”
