Girl wins the battle for good vision

“I missed a lot in my childhood and suffered in life till recently”

January 22, 2012 01:19 pm | Updated October 18, 2016 02:14 pm IST - MADURAI

Post-graduate student S. Sangeetha and her mother thank ophthalmologist Dr. G.Baskararajan. Photo: R. Ashok

Post-graduate student S. Sangeetha and her mother thank ophthalmologist Dr. G.Baskararajan. Photo: R. Ashok

Right from LKG, she has been wearing a very thick powerful glasses. As she grew up, this Madurai girl began missing several things in life because of her poor eyesight. Ridiculed by friends and relatives, the young school-going child and her parents faced mental trauma and feared that the future looked bleak for her education, marriage and job.

But, destiny saw this sports-loving postgraduate student, S. Sangeetha (22), with a different eye and this Madurai girl had won the battle for vision and now she need not wear ‘soda bottle' glasses anymore thanks to a successful surgery performed last month by city ophthalmologist, G. Baskararajan, who restored her eyesight to normalcy from an almost hopeless condition.

From a vision of as low as minus 30 (-30 dioptre), the girl with very high myopia who struggled, especially while in Classes X and XII, has recovered to a stage where she need not wear spectacles at all following surgeries done in two stages at Saraswathi Eye Hospital on East Veli Street in Madurai.

“Now I see a new world. I missed a lot in my childhood and suffered in life till recently because of my poor eyesight and the very thick glasses I had to put on always. I got discouraged and could not study what I actually wanted. But Dr. Baskararajan changed my life,” she says during her thanks-giving visit on Saturday to the hospital where she got her vision back.

The 67-year-old senior ophthalmologist too was at joy after seeing the celebration in the girl's family which was in dark all these years.

“When Sangeetha visited me for the first time, I examined her eyes and assured good recovery through two-stage operation in both eyes. She also had squint. In the first stage operation done on December 6, the retinal stretch was relieved and squint was corrected. There was good improvement immediately and after a gap of three weeks the second surgery was performed on January 2 and the very high myopia is no longer there for her. She is now able to see like all of us,” explains Dr.Baskararajan.

High myopia, he says, has often led to total loss of vision. The power of minus glasses increases as the children grow.

When the power of glasses exceeds minus 6D, it is termed as high myopia which is also known as progressive, degenerative and malignant myopia. The retinal layer loses its functional efficiency and retinal detachment is a serious vision-threatening complication.

“We approached many big eye hospitals in Madurai but doctors there just said that nothing could be done due to neuro defect in Sangeetha's eyes. Only a few months back, we were told about Saraswathi Eye Hospital of Dr. Baskararajan. Parents whose children have similar problems now have a hope,” mother Usha Rani says with tears of joy in her eyes.

The family which lives in Villapuram Housing Board Colony is now keen to go to next stage in life with a positive frame of mind as Sangeetha wants to complete her M.A. (Human Resources) and enter the teaching profession.

“I have been practising for the past 40 years and many patients with very high myopia had been treated successfully. With right intervention, we can say goodbye to ‘soda bottle' glasses. Girls, in particular, need special attention as their marriage is linked to eyesight,” the ophthalmologist says giving hope to many.

Meanwhile, Sangeetha's is now back in the hospital shelf and the girl walked out glass-free with her happy mother after thanking the doctor and staff on Saturday.

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