Sharing the gift of sight

For Dr. Stephen Hamilton, sometimes it takes less than half an hour to give someone their vision back.

A 1980 Vestavia Hills High School graduate, Hamilton is an ophthalmologist at Eye Consultants of Atlanta. He specializes in corneal transplants, Lasik eye surgery and complicated cataract removals, but his faith and upbringing, Hamilton said, inspired him to use his medical talents as an opportunity to help others.

This started with medical missions around the world, but when it became more difficult to travel, he found there was great need for eye care in his own city.

“My whole career I’ve always taken care of people. I’ve never turned a patient away if they can’t afford the care,” Hamilton said. “There’s lots of need here.”

It began with treating patients who came to his Atlanta office but, with or without insurance, couldn’t pay for eye surgery. This was especially common for cataracts, which Hamilton can remove in a 10- to 15-minute procedure. Then he decided to give his work a formal name to help spread the word: Operation Saving Sight.

“I had a lot of people coming to me that were completely blind from cataracts, and it’s so easy for me to help them,” Hamilton said.

Beginning in spring 2015, Operation Saving Sight has held two free surgery days per year for patients below the poverty line. Hamilton and the fellow training with him — who this year is Dr. Andrew Bartlett, a 2003 VHHS graduate who returns to private practice in Birmingham in July — spend the day performing cataract surgeries and, in a couple cases, corneal surgeries or transplants. While they often see more advanced cases of cataracts on these days, Hamilton said they are typically able to perform 15 to 20 surgeries at no cost.

It takes a lot more than the two surgeons to make Operation Saving Sight work. Hamilton said about 15 Eye Consultants volunteers, including office staff, nurses and anesthesiologists, will come in on their day off to assist with the procedures. Coordinating that many people’s schedules limits Hamilton to two days per year.

“I could do it every day but I couldn’t do it without all the staff I need,” Hamilton said.

Operation Saving Sight is also assisted by donations from the Eye Consultants of Atlanta Foundation, drug companies, laser surgery equipment manufacturers and the Georgia Eye Bank, which has donated transplant corneas that would normally cost several thousand dollars.

Hamilton has seen men and women come through his doors because they lost their jobs or can no longer drive due to cataracts. Most of the time, their vision is clear the very next day.

“All of them are certainly happy to see again, and I’d say there’s been a lot of outpouring of thanks,” Hamilton said. “To get them back to their lives, it’s cool that you can have that big of an impact.”

Hamilton’s path to ophthalmology was started when his family moved to Vestavia Hills as he entered his freshman year. The excitement and quality of teaching in the math and science departments was contagious, especially from teachers Jim Shoemaker, June Stevenson, Kay Tipton and Rosemary Buettner.

“They were all just the greatest teachers I’ve ever had,” Hamilton said. “The science and the math departments were so strong that I’m sure that drove me in that direction.”

While at VHHS, Hamilton also served on SGA and Key Club and helped to found the school’s soccer team under coach Rick Grammer, who retired last year. After graduating in 1980, Hamilton earned a chemical engineering degree at Auburn and planned to study anesthesiology at UAB. Then he met an ophthalmologist who was “so excited about what he was doing” and encouraged Hamilton to study the same field.

In ophthalmology’s use of technology and data analysis for eye surgery, Hamilton found a medical field that was “very compatible” with his engineering background.

“I don’t know how I ended up here but it obviously was the perfect thing for me to be doing,” Hamilton said.

Now, Hamilton gets to see patients walk out of his clinic and know Operation Saving Sight helped them resume their regular lives.

“It’s probably my favorite thing to do… these people are special because they need a hand up,” Hamilton said. “They’ve slipped through the cracks and we’re pulling them back up.”

He likes to share the story of Operation Saving Sight with as many people as he can, to encourage others to find simple acts of generosity they can perform in their own communities.

“I’m hoping that other people will say, ‘Hey, we can do this,’” Hamilton said.