His week-long pain–“the feeling of pins and needles”, as he puts it–will hopefully end on Thursday when he undergoes pellet-removal surgery in Aditya Jyot Eye Hospital, Wadala.
What troubles Rauf and his cousins Irshad and Zuhaib is the long list of pellet-injury patients waiting for treatment in Srinagar. “At Shri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital in Srinagar, we were told Rauf would have to wait for two months or more for his surgery,” said Irshad; Rauf’s medical papers show that he has been listed as pellet eye injury no.533. “We couldn’t bear to see our brother’s suffering and decided to skip that long waiting list and come to Mumbai,” Irshad said.
Eye surgeon Dr S Natrajan of Aditya Jyot Hospital said it’s not possible to say before surgery if Rauf’s vision will improve from the present hazy recognition of shadows. “We have to see if the pellet has affected his retina, optic nerves or macula,” said Natrajan, who has operated on 84 Kashmiri youths and kids in Srinagar in the two months since the latest unrest began in Kashmir. Srinagar-based brothers Irshad and Zuhaib, who have come with their cousin Rauf to Mumbai for the latter’s eye surgery, say the Kashmir Valley is seeing pellet injuries for the first time.
“The Valley’s doctors aren’t used to such an eye surgery. And though NGOs have been bringing doctors like Dr Natrajan, there is a long queue of patients,” said Irshad.
Natrajan, who was among the first eye specialists to rush to Srinagar at the request of NGOs, said the age of most of the 84 patients he operated in July and August was 15-22 years. “My youngest patient was a five-year-old boy,” he said.
He rushed to Srinagar from Patna, where during the course of a meeting of ophthalmologists, he got a WhatsApp message about the need for retina surgeons in the Kashmir capital.
“I have gone there twice for four-day sessions when I operated for 16 hours at a stretch, given the backlog of patients,” said Natrajan, adding that he is scheduled to leave for Srinagar after Bakri Id.
Pellet eye injuries pose a mega challenge because of the eye’s structure. “In people under 40, the vitreous gel is plastered between the lens and the retina. Separation is an art,” said Natrajan. Dr T P Lahane, an eye surgeon who is the dean of the state-run JJ Hospital, Byculla, said a team of surgeons from various eye specialities are needed to fix such injuries. “It’s unlikely that a patient will get complete vision after a pellet injury. If the pellet has not pierced the eye completely and has stopped midway , there is perhaps a chance of good vision,”Lahane said.
Incidentally, Natrajan is doing a study among 100 pellet eye injury patients from Srinagar to assess how surgery helps them. “Many are wrongly advised to not remove the pellet as it won’t help them regain full vision. Our study will help get a scientific answer,”said Dr Radhika Krishnan from the hospital.
Meanwhile, Rauf is hopeful that he will be able to return to his studies sooner than later. “My eye was immediately operated at the Shri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital on August 31, but the pellet wasn’t removed, “said Rauf. However, given the nature of retina surgeries, it will take six weeks to six months before vision correction is apparent. The Kashmir men have one request: “This horrible weapon should be stopped immediately. The government should ban it right now.” Union home minister Rajnath Singh has promised that the armed forces would look at options like chilli powder and other similar substances.
