The Eye Guy

Dr. William May does not have what one would call a typical commute this Friday morning.

May is going to work in light traffic at a speed of about 30 knots, pointing the tip of his 30-foot-long boat, Clarity, in the direction of Santa Catalina Island.

Laden with two luggage pullers and seven hard-shelled suitcases--one containing 150 pairs of glasses--May, an ophthalmologist, and a crew, er, staff of two depart from Peter’s Landing in Huntington Beach alongside the dive boats and fishermen. It’s a trip May makes twice a month, deviating from his usual practice in Whittier to provide the good citizens of Catalina with eye care.

If he didn’t do it, well, chances are no one would.

Or, as Avalon resident Hal Host, 78, puts it: “I’d have to go over there. I don’t like to go over there. I don’t like it at all.”

Over there, if you haven’t guessed by now, is mainland Southern California--a place that many islanders like Host, a 35-year resident, detest.

May had been going over to Catalina occasionally for about a year, seeing patients in the island’s tiny hospital.

Then circumstances forced him to get serious about practicing medicine there. In March, the only optometrist on the island moved away. That left the residents without an eye specialist of any kind. The only option was to go to the mainland. The trip costs $55 for the boat ticket and rental car, “before you even walk in the doctor’s door,” huffs Host.

“It’s a big issue for them,” May says of the loss of any health practitioner on the island. “Imagine trying to buy glasses. You have to make a whole day of it. When the optometrist stopped after nine years practicing here, that put us in the position of having to expand.”

Host is very glad about that.

“He’s doing a great service for Avalon,” Host says. “It’s badly needed here for people who don’t have transportation on the mainland. Here, you can just walk over to his office. It’s a hell of a deal. And I imagine he will make a buck or two.”

May typically works about half a day--from 8:30 a.m. to early afternoon--before taking his staff to lunch and sailing back. But he would like to see demand for his services grow on the island.

“Not a lot of people know I’m over here because, at first, I was just coming over for fun,” he says.

*

For anyone near the docks in Avalon around 8 a.m. this recent Friday morning it would be hard not to notice May, optician Doug McCallum and medical assistant Christina Rios. They roll their heavy cases down the dock, through the center of town about two blocks to the office of Dr. Douglas Orsel, an internist who is the town’s sole private practitioner. May and Orsel are old medical school buddies, and May uses the office while Orsel makes his Friday round of house calls to the elderly and disabled.

Within minutes of arriving at the sunny offices, May, McCallum and Rios are working swiftly, flipping open the cases and pulling out equipment and supplies. The first patient, dressed in Catalina casual, pulls up to the office in his golf cart promptly at 8:30. He takes a seat in the waiting room, which is actually a kind of sun porch with ceiling-to-floor windows, open French doors and a row of chairs.

Soon the next patient arrives, and Rios asks her to stand in the doorway of the lobby to read an eye chart taped to a wall in the next room. Except for a short mid-morning break when May strolls down the block for a cappuccino, the office is pleasantly chaotic.

“Ophthalmology lends itself well to this kind of care,” May says, sipping his cappuccino. “You can usually figure out what is going on and come up with a treatment plan.”

Occasionally, May has to ask patients to come to his office in Whittier--either because they should be examined again before May is scheduled to return or because they need surgery. But he tries to make the trip as comfortable as possible, arranging to have patients picked up at the dock and driven to his office and then back again.

He tries, however, to do what he can on the island and minimize the residents’ trips to his Whittier office.

“I was delighted when Dr. Orsel told me Dr. May would be coming over here,” says Alice Crosby, 77. “I’m getting old and I’m developing glaucoma.”

Crosby, dressed stylishly in pink with a matching pink hat, is meeting May for the first time this morning. Sitting in the waiting room, she eyes the tall man with the curly hair and rumpled, cotton shirt.

“I haven’t met him yet,” she confides. “But I checked him out word-of-mouth.”

Word-of-mouth is very big on the island. Let’s just say that if you’re not a good doctor or not a nice person, you won’t build much of a practice here. Despite their anxiety about going over there, Avalon residents don’t care much for outsiders who don’t care for them.

“People are very fond of Dr. Orsel,” says Crosby. “You’d be surprised how much people appreciate the doctors over here. Most doctors come here and then leave and never come back.”

There is no explanation for why doctors might find it hard to practice in a sunny paradise where you can walk down the street for an ice cream cone mid-afternoon if you want to. However, practicing on the island does have its challenges, May notes.

For example, today he is seeing a 3-year-old girl with serious, multiple eye problems. May is not a pediatric specialist. So, before seeing the patient, he calls a friend who is a pediatric ophthalmologist and who advises him on how to treat the child. Still not satisfied that he is doing the best for the girl, May has persuaded his friend to join him on an upcoming trip to examine her.

And, there are other conditions more prevalent on the island. The hot, dry climate is conducive to allergic conjunctivitis. And then there is the dreaded “maggot’s eye,” which reportedly is unique to Catalina. The condition occurs when botflies, which breed in the mouths and noses of the island’s goats, inject their larvae into people’s eyes.

May has treated a couple cases of maggot’s eye. It’s not particularly high tech. He takes a Q-tip and pries out the white, wiggling worm.

He also treats the usual eye ailments: cataracts, myopia and astigmatism. Many of Avalon’s residents are elderly, and age brings about eye problems.

Florence Lyon, 85, is a typical patient. She has just picked out a new pair of frames that, McCallum assures her, will be delivered to her via mail some time next week.

The old-timers tell it like it is.

“I think Dr. May is just wonderful. Although sitting out here is kind of like being in a goldfish bowl,” Lyon says, gesturing at the sun porch / waiting room.

But, says May, smiling: “I like their stories.”

*

As quickly as the day’s activity began, it ends. And, with speed driven by hunger pangs, May’s staff assembles their gear and heads out to lunch. Soon, they’re aboard the Clarity and leaving the fog-shrouded island behind. Everyone is a bit tired by now, and May still has post-operative patients to see back in Whittier.

But before heading east, he indulges in a little sightseeing, steering the boat along the island’s rocky coast, pocked with secluded beaches and jagged cliffs.

“It’s a dirty job,” he says with a grin, “but somebody’s got to do it.”