Gift of Sight Brightens a Darkened Life

Life is an unpredictable journey, sometimes an obstacle course and sometimes a bed of roses. So it was for Om Prakash Punia. A carefree childhood ended in a tragic accident, which resulted in the loss of his right eye. Treatment, hope, relapse, despair became the patterns of the ensuing years, until dark despair overtook his life…

A forty year-old, soft-spoken man, Om Prakash is a private cooking gas supplier. He spent his childhood in Village Adampur Dadhi, Tehsil, Charkhi Dadri, District Bhiwani, Haryana. It was in 1976, at the young age of eleven that he injured his right eye with the branch of a tree while playing. Scared that he would get scolded by his parents, he did not tell anyone at home. But the injury became obvious the next day, as his eye became red and started watering. His grandfather saw his condition and took him to a private hospital in Bhiwani. Om Prakash was admitted in the hospital for two weeks and administered some medicines due to which he eye became normal.

Life continued normally till 1987, when immediately after his marriage his eye problem recurred. Agriculture being his family profession he had to work under harsh climatic conditions. Once again, he went to the same hospital in Bhiwani, where he was kept in the hospital under observation, for one and a half months. His wife, Rajesh, was extremely worried. In a state of despair, Om Prakash even requested the doctor to give him an artificial eye, but the doctor refused to comply. Medication helped once again. But excessive heat still troubled him, and it became a recurrent problem, taking him back to visit the hospital time after time. Matters became worse when Om Prakash decided to move out if his village and take up the job of a security guard with a private company in Faridabad in 1991. Not being able to continue with his job, in three years Om Prakash went back to his village.

In 2002 once again he got a job as a security guard in a private company in Gurgaon. In between, his efforts to get proper treatment for his eyes continued. He went to various hospitals in Haryana and Delhi where the doctors suggested a corneal transplant as a permanent solution for his problem. Om Prakash was losing hope. It was not easy performing his tasks with just one functional eye, but he struggled on. It was a chance conversation with his barber, which led Om Prakash to visit the ankhon ka huspatal* in Gurgaon. This happened to be Venu’s Satellite Hospital in Dhankot.

After a thorough check-up it was confirmed that Om Prakash needed a corneal transplant. Without any further delay, Om Prakash registered himself with the Eye Bank at Venu. This was in July 2002, but it was not till a suitable eye was found in October 2003 that he was called for the transplant surgery. Om Prakash wasted no time and rushed to Delhi. Within two days he had had a corneal transplant in his right eye. He was discharged after four days.

The road to recovery after the transplant was slow, but steady. In the past one year he has regained his sight in the right eye remarkably well. Before the transplant his sight in that eye was a poor 10% which has become 90% now. Though it has taken him one long year to get the desired results, Om Prakash understands fully well that the body does take time to accept a foreign object like a donated cornea.

The fact that Om Prakash has now left his job and has started his own private Gas Agency is in itself a statement of how his life has changed after the transplant surgery. With the light returning to his eye, his confidence in himself and the future has returned.