2008 AOA Advocacy meeting in DC, Wednesday April 9, 2008

I am very thankful for this being the 4th year that I have attended this conference, because given the morning I had...I probably would have gone straight home if it had been my first year! Many of you know I am in the midst of relocating my office across the street from my current office. Because of this, and the fact that we are at the stage when things are crazy, and I am constantly on the phone with my architect and builder- I made the decision to take the Marc from Baltimore and then transfer to the Metro to arrive at the JW Marriott this morning as opposed to booking a hotel. Well, taking the 5:51AM Marc to transfer to the Metro went fine, until... Upon boarding the Metro, my bag got stuck in the automatic doors! I struggled with the bag and the doors with visions of being sucked out of the Metro train because I would never let go of my bag...Finally a really nice lady showed me how to push on the doors to release them and saved my bag (and me). Bad enough right? Well there is more to this crazy morning! After arriving at Metro Center, I got lost trying to find my way to F street! While rushing around trying to find the right exit, I walked by a vision-impaired gentleman who was in the process of unfolding his white cane. Can you guess what happened next?...Yes, my leg inadvertenly kicked his cane out of his hand while he snapped it open just as I was walking by...of course I stopped and gave him back his cane, apologized, spent about 5 minutes asking him if there was anything else I could do to help him...But perserverence pays off. I made it to our meeting at the JW Marriott with 5 minutes to spare! Anyway, my point with this story is getting involved in AOA advocacy is not difficult. In fact the AOA breakfast meeting and all of our meetings with our legislators went very smoothly. In my case it is the public transportation that proved to be difficult! Thank you to Valerie Seligson, and Tom Wong for attending the breakfast. We had the largest ever attendance with 500 OD's plus 104 students. I also want to thank Beverly Miller and Gemini Aurillo who went with me to each of our meetings today with our legislative representatives. We helped to educate our elected officials on the issues that affect our patients and our practices. I am looking forward to our AOA Advocacy Conference next year! I look forward to many more of our Maryland OD's to attend! Save the Date! June 22-24, 2009 in Washington DC for our next Advocacy Conference.

Tracie King, O.D.
2nd Vice-President Maryland Optometric Association