Jozefa Chabin of Wroclaw, Poland, couldn't see out of one of her eyes and only barely out of the other. And then Mishawaka ophthalmologist Phil Gabriele walked into her life. Or, shall we say, he danced into it...

Over his twelve years of experience, Dr. Philip Gabriele gained the expertise, focus and direction he needed to establish his own practice. That dream came true two years ago with the creation of the Gabriele Eye Institute, located at the corner of Main and Edison in Mishawaka. "My vision for starting Gabriele Eye Institute was to bring advanced procedures to our area that no one else could do," Dr. Gabriele said...

A flexible, implanted lens is turning back the clock on people's vision.

Crystalens, a new procedure to replace the eye's natural lens in cataract surgery, enabled Marge Zielinski to take off her Coke bottle-thick glasses.

Wilma Summers can see the alarm clock in the middle of the night-and see outside too...

Eight years ago, Maria Lopez was born with what her mother, Griselda Lopez, describes as holes in her skull and eye problems. A first operation last year at Shriners Hospitals for Children in Chicago repaired the holes but not the eyes.

Without a second operation, her mother says, Maria could lose the sight in one eye...

An 8-year-old South Bend girl whose family believed they would have to raise money to pay for a crucial eye surgery is scheduled to have that surgery. Misinterpretations may have led to confusion not only about whether Maria Lopez's surgery would be done, but also what exactly that surgery was supposed to fix.

A story earlier this month about Maria needing $9,600 for an eye operation at Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis told of her mother's desperate attempts to raise the money to keep her daughter from possibly going blind...

Griselda Lopez, 24, grew up in a colonia (neighborhood) in a small town in Mexico. Her father died when she was a year old and her mother was three months pregnant. Lopez married Alfredo, a young man from a neighboring colonia. Their daughter Maria de los Angeles Lopez, was born in June 1996.

"I didn't notice any problems with her until she was four months old," Griselda Lopez recalls.The child's head was twisted to one side, but none of the doctors she took her to could explain what was wrong...

Eyelid procedures, both functional and cosmetic, have grown to some 30 percent of the Gabriele Eye Institute’s business, partly because the work complements the business’s other services and partly because more men are seeking cosmetic help.

"We do young people, old people,” says Dr. Philip Gabriele, who has been working in the field since 1991 and opened the business five years ago.We get a lot of people who want to look younger, less tired."

Advances in technology led Dr. Tobin Mathews and Dr. Michael Lulenski of X-Ray Consultants Inc. two years ago to open Legacy Vein Clinic as a division to help people get rid of varicose veins and spider veins.

"In the last two years, we have been doing vein work, treating varicose veins," says Mathews, an interventional radiologist since 1981 who also works on medical issues from kidney stones to blocked bile ducts.