This it Tete. She is 18 years old and blind in both eyes. Her brother says that she has not seen anything for the last 3 years. She lives in Uige province, a remote province without access to healthcare. She spends her days doing hard labor; her family guides her by the hand to her work station and she grinds grain with what looks like a large mortar and pestal for hours on end without ever seeing the faces of her loved ones. She can't see the beauty of the African sunrise, the Baobab trees in blossom or the tall green grass waiving in the breeze. She has cataracts in both eyes and had the misfortune of being born in Angola.
There are many of these young people here that were born with cataracts and now there is nothing that can be done. I have operated on cataracts like this and after the surgery the vision is the same because the eyes never learned how to talk to the brain properly (amblyopia). Furthermore, she had the look of a syndromic child. An odd body type, possibly from an intrauterine infection or genetic disorder.
However, her brother insisted that 3 years ago she could see something. I could sense God urging me to do this surgery despite my doubts about her being able to see after surgery.
Her surgery was difficult. I'm going to explain it a bit for my opthalmology friends out there. She did not have a nucleus to speak of, only liquified cortex and capsular fibrosis. I made a quick linear incision in the anterior capsule with my cystotome at 12 oclock, and expressed the liquified cortex. These are tricky because if you use too much force with your needle you puncture the posterior capsule quickly as there is no nucleus to guard it. I filled the bag with viscoelastic and used scissors to open the rest of the bag, I placed a 1 piece PMMA Auralab lens in the sulcus and cleaned up the AC and called it a day. Surgery cost is less than $50 USD.
The next day when I went to see my post ops I was greeted by her brother who was all smiles. I found Tete in the ward looking at everything. Judging by the way she was inspecting every detail in the room , the surgery had returned her vision. There is a very uniform blank stare/expression on the faces of the blind. It is terrible to see. But when it is wiped away by a successful surgery, it is very gratifying.
We did surgery on both eyes in the span of 5 days. She is now 20/30 at distance and J3 near in both eyes uncorrected.
Thank you to everyone who is supporting us here both financially and with your prayers. You helped bring back sight to this young woman.
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