Eyes

Each day in the hospital, I reflect that they should have spent more time teaching us about eyes. Eyes tell a doctor so much. I’m not talking about things like jaundice and anemia, though these are important too. Eyes do not lie, to a sensitive doctor.He is a twenty-year-old boy.
Embarrassed a little at his parents’ concern. “He’s had fever for 5 days, doctor.” The mother says. In spite of his would be bravado, he looks a little sick, and I admit him. Blood tests show he has a very severe malaria, and I am worried, angry too. Why did you bring him this late I want to ask her, but the misery and anxiety in her eyes as she looks at her shivering son hushes me.

We start him on treatment, but it is a steady downhill course.I am very concerned now. His breathing is becoming laboured, his kidneys are not working. His liver is packing up.

“We may need to intubate and ventilate him.” I tell the father. He closes his eyes and turns his face to the wall sobbing. “We may have to put him on a ventilator.” I tell the mother. “It’s expensive.” “Anything, do anything, doctor.” She looks at me, one mother to another, and says, “He is my only son, doctor.”

I have to save this boy. We connect him to a ventilator, we dialyze him, we put him on medicines to bring up his blood pressure . But I know , I know somehow that nothing is going to work. The boy lasts through the night but he does not see the morning sunlight that slants in to the ICU.

I have to tell the mother. I know she will die a little death herself as I tell her. However, I must tell her.I do not have to tell her. She sees it in my eyes and so does her husband . He is sobbing, wailing. She is frozen . “Can I see him?” “Yes.” I say, and as I lead her in to the ICU, she is shaking.

She softly touches the still face of the one she has borne, fed , brought up and loved, probably more than she has loved anyone or anything in her life . I am crying at the pain in her face. She looks up at me, dry eyed and says, “We would like to donate his eyes, doctor.”