The conjunctivitis

Two years after the day in 1996. It was a season of conjunctivitis. It had infected every second kid in the locality. I was not the lucky one. Both my eyes had swelled up. It was very common those days. Especially among the children. It usually stayed for a few days and then used to get away, without any harm to the eyes.

But this time it was different for me. Everything was usual. But as the conjunctivitis went away I gradually started noticing that my right eye having problem seeing things. There was some fuzziness in the vision with the right eye. As my left eye was working just fine, I did not have any difficulty in seeing things though. I waited for about a month for it to go away by itself. But it persisted.

So I told this to my mother. She got worried. Very worried. We consulted the compounder in our village. He suggested consulting an eye specialist doctor. There were no doctors around in the village. The nearest we could find one was in the city about 45 kilometres away from the village. The transport was also not an easy task. The money problem was another issue.

It took us a few days to convince our father that I needed to get consulted by an eye doctor. So finally we went to the city. Probably this was my second visit to the city. We consulted the best doctor available in the city. He happened to be the head of the ophthalmology department of the medical college in the city. He saw me and asked if my eye was hit by something. I could not remember anything. He prescribed some medicines and eye drops and advised to come back in three months after the medication is over. So we came back to our village.

The vision was only worsening day by day. The fuzziness in the vision turning more towards darkness. The medicine continued for the period. I did not notice any improvement. So we got only worried. We started consulting other people as well while the medicine was continuing.

Three months had passed. The vision was getting darker and darker. We went back to the city. We were advised to visit a doctor called S.N. Mitra at a special eye hospital called Poor Home. This was a facility in the city that was running with an aid from some foreign agencies. It had all the modern facilities to diagnose the disease.

At this place we consulted this Dr. Mitra. After the tests he declared that it was a cataract! He did not prescribe any medicine. He suggested that I should wait till the cataract gets ripe enough to be operated upon. He said it will get ripe in a year or two.

My parents were relieved. We came back and we waited.

I had now passed my tenth grade and was to get enrolled in the plus two grades. But there was some problem. Someone had taken my certificates to the city with the promise he will get me admitted in the best college possible in the city. It had been more than ten months now and he had turned up. I was yet to get admitted into any college. I used to enquire about this to my father. But he was also helpless. He had trusted this guy and got ditched.

To encourage me, he suggested me to start attending the nearby college which was about 6 kilometres from our village where we lived. This was the only local college there. I had no choice now. I knew that classes in the colleges must have reached more than half of the courses. Anyhow, I started attending the class in the college.

Then all of a sudden this guy came and returned my certificates to my father, saying that I could not get admission into any of the colleges. When I got to know this, I was heart broken. Most of my classmates had already got admission into colleges. I was the only one staying away still. It gave me more pain that I will be lagging behind in comparison with them. I blamed my father for this. Already one year had passed without me getting admitted into any colleges. I was so much pained with this that I felt no body cared for me in the family. So I decided to be on my own. I decided to leave the house!

And that is what I actually did. I left home and started for Delhi where one my uncles stayed. I was determined that I will continue my education and also work to support myself.

So I came to Delhi after a taxing journey of about two days out of which the 18 hour train journey was spent standing on toe!

I stayed in Delhi for about 21 days. My parents got to know of my whereabouts nearly two weeks after I had left the house when they talked to my uncle over the phone. I returned back to home in an exciting journey that is another story to be told. Let me keep it for another occasion.

When I came back I was told by my father he will let me do anything I want. He will support me with all that he can. I was happy.

I decided to go to the city and explore if there was anything I could do to get admitted into my own session. The state of Bihar was really in its colour of the time. I met a guy in the lodge where I stayed. He suggested that I could get admitted one year back on the record if I agreed to opt for the commerce stream. I was more inclined to do science, but to save the time of about year of my life, I thought better to go for this.
So, I got admitted with the help of this clerk in the college who admitted me one year back on the records! That was the clerical power on display! In return the clerk wanted me to study commerce papers with him as he also ran a coaching centre for the commerce students.  I had no problem with this. I said yes.

I started attending his classes and soon discovered that he was incapable of solving some problems syllabus. I knew that I had only ten months cover a syllabus that was meant to be read in two years! I did not lose time in stopping his classes and reading on my own to get myself prepared for the upcoming exams. That was helpful.

In the meanwhile, the right eye had ripened. It had gone totally white in the middle which used to be brown. This is what the doctor has to be the sign of cataract being ripe. I thought it was time to get back to the doctor. So I went there. I was told that they will need to do the cataract surgery. There should be someone with me at that time. I called my parents and went to the doctor.

To our devastation, after the initial tests for the surgery, we were told that the surgery could not take place. The reason, there was no pressure in the eye! The doctor said that even if he did the surgery the vision will not come back.

This was the day of devastation for me. Although I did not feel instantly what it would be like living the rest of life without vision? I had never thought about this. The first thing that came to me was anger. I was angry on discovering that contrary to the doctor’s diagnosis earlier, it was not cataract. All the time that I waited I could have done more to prevent the loss of the eye pressure. I discovered that the eye pressure is something that is needed for the functioning of the eye. The pressure is lost when the nerve gets disconnected with the brain that supplies blood and other nutritious things for the proper functioning of the eye. In my case the nerve had got dried up and was no longer connecting the right eye with the brain. This situation was described as pthisis bulbi in the medical terminology.

Although I was angry and had anticipated the life that was coming afterwards, I had maintained my courage. I was worried that my parents should not get hopeless and do something that was not worth it. I threatened the doctor with a case in the consumer court for his negligence and advising me the wrong way and making me wait without any treat until I lost the vision. This was doctor’s fault. There was no doubt about it. He had admitted to it. He was saying sorry. In fact he apologized to my father and begged for no such case. As a villager, my father considered a doctor to be the second avatar of god. He readily forgave him. And we left the hospital. Totally hopeless, knowing that the vision to my right eye was never going to come back.

I sent my parents back to the village. As I was staying the city, I thought having second opinions with other doctors. There was the same result. The eye pressure has lost and there was no solution to this. I was told that I could donate this eye to someone else where it would work, but I could not use the eye of any one else because now the problem was with not my eye but with the nerve which had stopped supporting the eye.