Doctor Gupta and his team meet us and tell us the story of this two-day affair. In a school in the town center, villagers gather to be tested and hope to qualify for free cataract surgery. The sun in the desert is harsh, and sunglasses aren’t even a concept understood, so the occurrence of cataracts is much higher than in most populations, and medical care is difficult to come by as well as prohibitively expensive (though dirt cheap by American standards…the actual cost of cataract surgery is $65 US dollars…to be able to see! Relief Riders has teamed with a non-profit organization so if you feel like giving…tax-deductible…the “Gift of Sight” you can donate easily on the RRI website. I’ll give more information about that later, but would be honored if you were inspired to do so.)
Doctor Gupta and one other surgeon do six camps per month twelve months of the year. They can screen up to hundreds and hundreds of prospective patients and those that qualify—no diabetes, uncontrolled hypertension, high blood pressure, etc—roughly 10-15 percent of those screened, are operated on. They have screened over 275 patients in intake before we arrive, and 32 will get surgical procedures performed tonight. The others are given outpatient care and consultation…eye drops, sunglasses, eye tests, etc.
Downstairs in the school, in a large, bare, dimly lit room, patients and family members are sitting and lying on the floor like at the snowed-in airports of New York before I left. A family member or attendant is required to accompany each patient, and they will all spend the night here in this room on thin blankets spread over a cement and linoleum floor. Each admitted patient has a quadruple-blind system of marking which eye will be operated on. There is white surgical tape on the brow over the eye, a purple permanent ink mark over that same eye since in the past some patients have misunderstood and moved the tape to their “good” eye. There is more tape on the surgery-side hand and foot to be extra clear. There is palpable fear and anxiousness in the room, and it feels a bit weird and exploitative when we start snapping photos, but most, in addition to being overwhelmed, are excited and proud of the procedure they are about to have, and they enjoy posing. There is some other press there (even though I am not here as official press but simply a participant who will write about it all later for my magazine-but unlike assignments, I am prioritizing the experience over taking notes/working) A young-ish Rajasthani editor of a local (State of Rajasthan) newspaper somehow zeroes in on me though we share not a word of common language, with charades he communicates that he is writing an article on the eye camp, and presses the latest edition of his paper into my hands.
Surgeries will start this evening, and each takes 20-30 minutes. The two surgeons have the system down to an efficient art. Standing between two gurneys, a doctor will operate on the patient on the left, and as soon as he is finished will rotate the microscope/instruments to the gurney on the right where the next patient has been prepped and is ready. While he does that procedure, the other gurney will be refreshed with the next patient. Back and forth, they will work deep into the night.
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