“San is married with three children and one grandchild,” our medical partner, Children’s Surgical Centre (CSC), reports. She is 57 years old and lives with her family in Cambodia. Usually, she enjoys doing house works and sewing mats in her free time from work.
“San has had a cataract for about three years,” reports CSC. “Being partially blind in one eye makes it hard for her to do her work at the farm and hard to go anywhere by herself.”
Cataracts are a cloudiness of the lens of the eye caused by growth of abnormal proteins on the lens. Having lived with the cataract for three years, it has worsened to the mature stage. This means that the cloudiness has turned the lens opaque. If it goes untreated, it will continue to worsen until San loses all vision in that eye.
Treating a cataract is a simple surgery. Unfortunately, with limited ability to work on the farm, it is difficult for San to earn the money to fund the surgery herself. With our support, however, San can cover the cover the costs of the surgery, medicines, and the two-day hospital stay required of the operation.
For $150, doctors will perform the operation that will help restore her vision. In a short procedure, a surgeon will make a small incision in San’s eye to remove the affected lens and replace it with an artificial lens, allowing San to see clearly.
After the surgery, doctors anticipate only a one to two day recovery time before San is ready to undertake all the activities she used to enjoy. “She hopes to return to the farm, take better care of her house and go to the pagoda,” CSC shares with us.