UNBEARABLE PAIN
Woman feels like plucking out sick eye
Two years ago, Jamaicans answered Lisa Grant’s cry for financial assistance towards a crucial eye surgery. Grant, whose right eye is protruding from the socket, raised more than US$10,000 (approximately $1.3 million at the time) in less than 24 hours in 2019, after a GoFundMe appeal was launched on her behalf.
Fast-forward to 2021. Grant’s medical condition has worsened as no operation was done. She is also financially challenged, having spent the money that was donated for the surgery. Now she is seeking to raise US$20,000 (approximately J$2.9 million) to have an eye operation done in Cuba, even though she is yet to book an appointment in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean country.
“Mi did have to use that money to pay doctor bills because the eye a get worse, and every time mi make an appointment to do the surgery, dem stretch it out and give me a longer date,” Grant, 47, told
THE STAR yesterday. Accounting for the funds donated in 2019, Grant said, “The money spend up because every time mi do a little test, it take money. Mi can’t see good, so mi have to carry mi daughter up and down with mi, so we pay a lot of taxi fare.”
Grant said that she collected about $600,000 from that money that was pledged, and she did not squander a cent. “Not even clothes mi never buy with the money,” she said.
“Right now, mi look like a madwoman because mi nuh have nothing. Money can’t make me feel sweet right now; di only ting could make me feel good is if mi eye go dung. Mi could never waste money say mi a guh buy clothes and ting, and mi eye look suh. Mi wah go Cuba go get it done, but mi nuh have the money yet.”
She stated that she was supposed to have the surgery done at the University Hospital of the West Indies, but was never given a firm date for the operation.
“Every time mi go dem put it off, so mi start go regular doctor, and one a the doctor dem tell mi say anyhow dem operate mi a guh dead, suh mi catch mi fraid. Right now the eye is infected and is pus a run out of it. Honestly, mi wish mi could just pluck out di eye,” she said.
Grant, who in recent times relocated from New Haven, St Andrew, to Wild Cane in St Ann, has been struggling with eye problems since she was a teenager. She said that when she was 17, she got up one morning with an itchy eye. Some time after, the eye began to bulge, but she was not sure what was happening. Within a few years she had to do surgery for her eye to be reduced to its normal size. She says she is now in constant pain, and believes very soon the eye may fall out of its socket.
“I can hardly see, and a night- time is bare problem. It get so bad that sometimes I have to walk and hold my eye because it feel like it a go drop out. Sometimes all 20 painkillers mi take a daytime to ease the pain, and a lot of times it nuh work. I can’t work like one time, and I don’t have any food or anything,” Grant said.
Added to her distress is the constant unwanted stares and ridicule.
“Sometimes mi a walk and mi hear people a bawl out say, ‘ See di big eye gyal dere’, and when dem say suh mi feel like mi a guh sink in di earth. Mi never stay like dis enuh, and is not like mi ever do anything to make miself look like this. Right now mi ‘ fraid to go on the road. Sometimes mi cry, and sometimes mi feel like mi woulda kill myself,” she said.
“Sometimes mi a walk and mi hear people a bawl out say, ‘See di big eye gyal dere’, and when dem say suh mi feel like mi a guh sink in di earth. Mi never stay like dis enuh, and is not like mi ever do anything to make miself look like this. Right now mi ‘ fraid to go on the road.”