Profile by jodi demassa

Mark Roberts The Eye Surgeon

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magine visiting to the orphanage that gave you a new life. After traveling around the world with his new family, Mark Roberts decided that he wanted to give back. Every year he visits the Philippines and San Diego to see his wife, Melissa Roberts’s family and his own. In the Philippines, he interacts with the kids in the orphanage. The kids range from

one year olds to three year olds.

When he’s there, he holds each one of them and sends in donations. He’s open-minded to whatever type of baby he adopts as long as it’s healthy.

As soon as the paperwork is done, he wants to expose the child to his or her own culture like his parents did.

His dad majored in math and both of his parents home schooled him. She was a musician. His mom

him how to play the piano and guitar. Back then, he was too eager to learn songs by reading notes. To this day, he relies on visuals to get the movement down. He’s now an eye surgeon. He treats glaucoma and cataracts.

He also has two sisters and brothers--Katherine, Liz, Paul, and John. Mark and John traveled around to Bethlehem, Jerusalem,

By Jodi DeMassa

Germany, and the Philippines before Katherine and Liz were born.

While they traveled, his father preached. They took him back to the Philippines to re-expose him to his culture from. When they moved to Michigan he struggled with transitioning to being in a public school environment.

He lived in Kansas for 20 years after moving from Michigan. In college, he wasn’t sure which major to pursue. He went into criminal justice to investigate crime scenes. However, he realized that when he did the simulations in his firearm classes, he wasn’t too quick with the gun.

As a result, he changed his major sophomore year and went into athletic training. Unfortunately, he realized that the odds of working for professional baseball team were too high. There wasn’t many other job opportunities in that field. He wanted to have a well paying job with a range of opportunities. Then he looked into general nursing and would go from there. He found an agency connection to Stanford and that’s when he practiced anesthetics.

When he came to California, he found a church that went to the Philippines every year to help the people in need at a

at a medical clinic. Every day 200 people would come in. Mark took people’s blood pressure and checked the for lice or scabies. He tended for people with different breathing problems, open wounds, fevers, coughs, and asthma.

Scabies are bugs that eat your skin, go underneath it, and cause patches. To treat scabies, he used a special substance in hopes that it would help.

At Stanford, some patients under anesthesia for 8-10 hours there. He’d work the late hours without many people around. If the person had a cardiac arrest, or a heart attack, he knew where the emergency equipment was.

In case of respiratory problems, he’d jaw thrust the patient to open up the airways. When doing a jaw thrust, the doctor comes from behind and pulls upwards with cupped hands.If that didn’t work, he’d need to use a ventilator to help the person breathe and come out of the anesthesia. If the monitor senses slow breathing waves, it starts to beep. When it would beep, he’d shake the person to wake them up. If no response, he’d lay them down flat and use the ambu bag. An ambu bag is full of oxygen and is used instead of performing CPR. Mark doesn’t use general anesthesia. It lowers circulation and breathing

too much and comes with alot of problems. The fatality was high when it was first introduced.

Nowadays more doctors are using twilight anesthesia because it’s a much safer procedure which keeps a person at a higher level of consciousness.

He mainly treats glaucoma and cataracts. There are two types of glaucoma: the open angle and the angle closure. Both affect our vision and add pressure in the eye. It cannot be cured, but it can be controlled with pills and eyedrops. People with cataracts see changes in color because the eye lense acts as a filter. It affects people’s ability to see things clearly, and distorts images. Driving is not advisable. Cataracts can also be caused by injury to the eye. Doctors can treat cataracts by using a fakomachine which sucks up the cataracts and allows them to put in a new lense. Each operation only takes 10 minutes. All patients getting surgery starts on IV’s and under the a microscope. Mark’s surgery center does some cornea replacements using donated corneas and also replace people’s lenses.

When he moved to California to work at Stanford, he began to run with friends for 5k, 10k, and

½ marathons recreationally. He’d combine gold gym workouts, cardio, and Insanity to train for his first marathon in Morgan Hill.

Insanity is a workout program that had 30 second breaks with no weights. Three times a week he’d run, then cross train on one day.

It took him only three months of training.

He never expected to run a marathon. On mile 22 or 23, his leg started to cramp and his toenail began to dig into him--causing him to slow down significantly. The music he had kept him going. He listens to pop reggae artists like 311, country artists like John

Montgomery, and Christian rock like Canidae. When Paul, his brother, came back from Kansas University, he introduced 311 to Mark. He was introduced to John Michael Montgomery’s music and christian rock from his parents. As a quick visual learner, Mark recently picked up the ukelele and plays every night before he goes to sleep. He used Youtube to get the hang of it and knows a couple of songs.

He’s like a bike tire. He’s well rounded, travels often, and wants to give back. He cycles back to the Philippines and San Diego to see family and the children in the orphanage every year. He’s lived in different environments--from being homeschooled to public school, living in urban and rural areas, and partaking various medical connections. Lastly, he wants to change another child’s life like his parents did. Five years ago, his dad and mom sought out St. Paul’s church for Mark. Mark met Pastor Aaron Smith and they connected instantly. Both of them were pastor’s kids and Tiger’s

fans.They are now very close. He described Mark as an “athletic, determined, and genuine guy.

He’s an active guy, has no sign of pretentiousness, and speaks well of his family.”

“Mark is Funny, Energetic, and Kind-Hearted” -Melissa Roberts.

“He’s an active Guy, Has no sign of pretentiousness, and Speaks well of His Family”

-Pastor Aaron.