‘You don’t want to go blind’: Mobile eye clinic reaches P.E.I. seniors – CTV
July 30, 2025
Blanche Westaway squinted at the eye chart set up in her Summerside, P.E.I., nursing home, trying to remember her last vision exam.
The 77 year old could not, and neither could several fellow residents at the facility.
“You don’t want to go blind… a lot of people aren’t doing this, and they should be,” Westaway said.
Optometrist Jessica Wood is trying to change that. Since April, she has loaded equipment into her Toyota RAV4 and visited care homes across the Island’s western region, taking her services straight to seniors and reaching rural communities.
On Tuesday morning, her office was the chapel at Wedgewood Manor.
“I’ve heard 20 years. I’ve heard never,” Wood said about people’s response when asked about their last vision test. “I have put lenses in front of patients’ eyes and had them say, ‘Oh, my gosh, I didn’t know I could see like this.’”
