Today, she’s in our senior kindergarten and at the start of this academic year we noticed a marked change in her behaviour. She missed classes often and complained of stomach pain when she did come to class.
Our community worker encouraged Sunita’s parents to take her complaints seriously. Her parents are both daily-wage labourers and a day off work means a day without pay, so they held off the doctor’s visit as much as they could.
Soon Sunita’s stomach pain was too much to bear and she was missing weeks of class. Her parents finally took her to a private hospital for treatment but to no avail. She was still lying at home all day in horrible pain.
Her parents then took her to one of Vision Rescue’s partner government hospitals for treatment. As her parents are both illiterate, our medical team assisted Sunita and her family through all the formal procedures.
After a series of tests, the doctors were unable to find the root cause of her illness. That’s when Sunita’s mother revealed that from her nursery days, Sunita used to eat her mother’s hair while falling asleep.
The doctors immediately operated on Sunita, and found a ball of hair weighing nearly 20 gems inside her stomach. The surgery took 12 stitches to close and Sunita still bears the scars.
After a month’s recovery at home, Sunita came back to our senior kindergarten class earlier this year. She’s no longer quiet and unresponsive during lessons. She’s enthusiastic about every class activity and loves playing with her friends.
If Vision Rescue hadn’t handheld Sunita and her family through this crisis, her well-being may have been permanently impaired, and her education compromised.
