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Second Suns: Two Trailblazing Doctors and Their Quest to Cure Blindness, One Pair of Eyes at a Time

Până la David Oliver Relin, Paul Farmer și Geoffrey Tabin

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Editor:: The Experiment
Lansat:: Oct 1, 2016
ISBN:: 9781615193639
Format:: Carte

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Now in paperback: a #1 New York Times–bestselling author’s gripping chronicle of “two doctors . . . bringing light to those in darkness” (Time)

The publisher will donate a portion of its proceeds on the sale of this book to the Himalayan Cataract Project.

Second Suns is the unforgettable true story of two very different doctors with a common mission: to rid the world of preventable blindness. Dr. Geoffrey Tabin was the high-achieving “bad boy” of his class at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Sanduk Ruit grew up in a remote village in the Himalayas, where cataract blindness—easily curable in modern hospitals—amounts to an epidemic. Together, they pioneered a new surgical method, by which they have restored sight to over 100,000 people—all for about $20 per operation.

Master storyteller David Oliver Relin brings the doctors’ work to vivid life through poignant portraits of their patients, from old men who can once again walk treacherous mountain trails, to children who can finally see their mothers’ faces. The Himalayan Cataract Project is changing the world—one pair of eyes at a time.

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Second Suns: Two Trailblazing Doctors and Their Quest to Cure Blindness, One Pair of Eyes at a Time

Până la David Oliver Relin, Paul Farmer și Geoffrey Tabin

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Evaluare: 4 din 5 stele4/5 (48 stele)

Lungime: 599 pagini11 ore

Descriere

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Editor:: The Experiment
Lansat:: Oct 1, 2016
ISBN:: 9781615193639
Format:: Carte

Despre autor

David Oliver Relin

Journalist David Oliver Relin (1962–2012) was a recipient of the Kiriyama Prize and a James A. Michener Fellowship. He coauthored the #1 New York Times bestseller Three Cups of Tea.

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Second Suns - David Oliver Relin

Haiti.

CHAPTER 1

See You

This world is blinded by darkness. Few can see. . . . Become a lamp unto yourself.

—Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, from the last teaching

There is the Nepal of myth, the ice-and-rock realm of Mount Everest, the roof of the world. Then there is the country where most Nepalese actually live. I was still unfamiliar with that other, more earthly, Nepal when I first came to the Khumbu.

I had hiked up to the village of Thame, at twelve thousand feet, with Apa Sherpa. He stood a wiry five foot three and weighed perhaps 120 pounds. Apa’s hair was cropped close, and his head was a thing of beauty—smooth and sun-browned like an exotic nut. Looking at him, you’d never guess he was one of the world’s greatest athletes. But by the age of fifty, Apa had climbed to the top of Everest twenty times; no one had ever stood on the sharp peak of the earth’s highest point more often.

Apa had invited me to Thame to meet his family and gather material about his career in the mountains, hoping that I would write a book about him. I was intrigued, not simply because of his high-altitude achievements but because, unlike many publicity-seeking Western mountaineers, Apa, like most Sherpas, climbed not for glory but to feed his family. He had also dedicated his most recent expeditions to raising money for the schools that surrounded the mountain his people know as Chomolungma, Goddess Mother of the World, and to raising awareness of the toll that global warming was taking on the Khumbu’s receding glaciers.

Relin and Apa Sherpa visit Apa’s home village of Thame. David Oliver Relin, 2008

By the time I arrived, the five-room school Sir Edmund Hillary had built in Apa’s village was planning to lay off two of its teachers because of funding shortages, which would force the older students to walk six hours each day if they wanted to continue attending classes. And the lower portion of Thame had recently been washed away when a lake of glacial meltwater overran its rim and thundered through the valley where Apa had been raised. His family’s home had been spared. So had the house next door, which belonged to the family of Tenzing Norgay, the first person to step onto the summit of Everest, alongside Hillary, in 1953.

Apa Sherpa had taken advantage of his prominence as a mountaineer to move his family from Nepal to suburban Salt Lake City, where his three children could count on a quality education. But his American dream hadn’t panned out as he’d expected; Apa’s attempt to create a line of outdoor clothing had crash-landed shortly after its launch. When he emailed me to introduce himself, he was working in a metal shop, stamping out road signs for Utah’s highways. Apa wasn’t bitter. He described his achievements on Everest with such matter-of-fact modesty that I agreed to accompany him to Nepal on his next expedition.

As the stone and ice immensities of the Himalaya thrust into view around every twist in the trail, Apa led me over swaying suspension bridges and up steep rock staircases with effortless grace. And as we traveled together, he proved to be one of the kindest people I’d ever met. Whenever my breathing became ragged, he’d put a hand on my shoulder. Slowly, slowly, he’d say, guiding me to a seat on the nearest stone wall or to a bench at a tea house, where he’d pretend that he, too, was anxious to rest.

At altitude, the air was beautifully crisp, the peaks fairy-tale white. The sky draped over the low stone homes of Thame was the unblemished blue of tourist brochures. Each morning I’d wake to the gentle alarm of yak bells. Cocooned in my warm sleeping bag, I’d open my eyes, peer through puffs of my breath, and watch wood smoke from breakfast fires drift across low stone walls that divided pastures from potato fields. On one side, shaggy black pack animals foraged for grass shoots with delicate lips. On the other, slender plants angled toward the sun, pale green with new growth.

I interviewed Apa’s elderly mother as she spun her prayer wheel and kept my tin mug of butter tea topped up. I also spoke with Apa’s climbing partners, brothers, aunts, uncles, and cousins. I was so enchanted by Thame that I lingered there for several days, resisting the conclusion that was becoming as clear to me as the air above the village: that writing a book about a man climbing the same mountain twenty times, even the world’s highest mountain, even for admirable reasons, was not something I could do well.

Apa was preparing for another attempt on Everest, and though I protested that I could find my way back down the trail to the airstrip at Lukla, where I planned to catch a small plane to Kathmandu, he insisted on accompanying me for the three-day trek. His middle-aged sister-in-law served as our porter, carrying, by a strap balanced across her broad forehead, the expedition bag I could barely lift. And with each step closer to the world of cities, with each foot of altitude lost, I felt more acutely how lucky I had been to get a glimpse into the life of this gentle man, and how much I regretted failing him.

Apa left me at Lukla. I promised that when he returned from Everest, we’d hold a fund-raiser together for the Thame School, which we managed to do a few months later. And I delayed telling him about my pessimistic view of the book’s future. I didn’t want him carrying that disappointment on his way back to the top of the world.

I spent a day sitting on a foggy airstrip, feeling like I’d been cast out of a kind of paradise, waiting for a window to open in the weather so a Yeti Airlines propeller plane could land. Dreadlocked European trekkers lounged against their backpacks, smoking hash or playing hacky sack on the empty runway, killing the hours. Sheets of fog blew by like possibilities, blanketing all of us in gloom, or opening narrow boreholes that revealed the snowfields of the high peaks, hinting at and then denying the splendor that surrounded us. The runway tilted steeply downhill, and everything felt out of balance. Though I was looking up, whenever I got a glimpse of clear sky I felt I was staring down into the ice-blue depths of a glacier.

The sight of those mountains made me think of a promise I’d made to another climber.

I’d met Dr. Geoffrey Tabin late one night the previous winter, in Utah. He approached me in the ballroom of the Cliff Lodge, at the Snowbird ski resort, after I’d given a lecture. Tabin waited until the crowd thinned out. Then he pounced. He told me about his considerable achievements as a climber, which included scaling the Seven Summits, the highest points on each continent. Before inviting me to dinner the following evening, he spoke of his current passion, working with a Nepalese surgeon named Sanduk Ruit to cure blindness in the developing world. Tabin was as tenacious and outgoing as Apa was modest and reserved. I agreed to join him for a meal only because he made it nearly impossible to say no.

We met for Mexican food the next night in Salt Lake City, where Tabin works, when he isn’t overseas, as director of the International Ophthalmology Division at the University of Utah’s Moran Eye Center. Or, rather, I watched as the bundle of nervous energy that is Geoff Tabin ticked in his seat like a time bomb and told implausible stories that turned out to be true—he really had been part of a group of adrenaline addicts at Oxford University who invented bungee jumping—while inhaling all his food and half of mine.

A lot of climbers get all weird and competitive, Tabin said, his voice high-pitched, his cheeks bulging with carne asada. I try to take the golden retriever approach to life. Try to be friendly to everyone. You get more done that way. I could see, even then, that he was more terrier than retriever. Tabin is compact, thickly muscled, and has a habit, once he gets something in his teeth, of not letting go. We spoke of my upcoming trip to Nepal with Apa, and he urged me to look in on his partner in Kathmandu if I had a few hours free. He said proudly that Tilganga, the eye hospital Dr. Ruit had built, was the finest medical facility in Nepal, an assembly line turning out minor miracles of healing. He assured me I’d find Ruit fascinating, if a little intimidating. Tabin’s enthusiasm was infectious, but I couldn’t escape the sensation that I was becoming lodged in the terrier’s teeth.

On the airstrip, I waited seven hours with no sign of an arriving plane. Lukla is one of the world’s most dangerous airports, and closures can last for days. Six months after I left, in similar weather, a Yeti Airlines Twin Otter crash-landed just short of the runway, killing two crew members and all sixteen passengers. Toward dusk, I was losing hope when a chartered helicopter touched down to pick up United Nations staff, and I was able to buy my way onboard.

We flew low, beneath the clouds, tracing the contours of the land. For me, Nepal was Kathmandu and a collection of snow peaks. But as we floated slowly down toward the capital, I saw that the barren, brick-colored hills in between were densely populated. Every slope, no matter its pitch, seemed to have been stripped of trees for cooking fires and sculpted into terraced fields. I observed small figures, bent to their labors, working to draw nourishment from depleted soil. Far below, rust-colored runoff from eroded hillsides pooled like blood where it met what had once been unspoiled mountain streams, staining them with evidence of overpopulation.

With my head leaning against the helicopter’s scuffed window, I felt deflated, as the book I’d come halfway around the world hoping to write receded into the fog like the high peaks of the Himalaya. Dipping beneath storm clouds, we passed over the hill dwellers so closely that I could see our rotor blast ruffle their mud-spattered clothes. But they rarely looked up at us, and I had a peculiar sense of disconnection—that the six of us gliding over their heads in our aluminum capsule were living not only in a different world but in a different century.

Sullenly, I watched the poverty of the mid-hills slide past my window. The thatched huts fastened by pillars of felled trees to denuded hilltops, the men hacking terraces from the dirt with hoes, the women carrying water up from fouled streams that trickled an hour’s hike beneath their homes, the underfed cattle and skinny dogs—all of it scrolled by like a documentary I didn’t want to see. I couldn’t know then how much of the next three years I’d be spending in that landscape, that the brick-red soil of the mid-hills would seep into my clothing and flesh and stain the way I saw not only Nepal but the world.

The air down at four thousand feet felt hot and wet. With each breath I was aware of dense vegetal decay. Despite its powerful engine, our Land Cruiser crept along, averaging only twenty miles an hour on the road from Kathmandu to Rasuwa. The drive had looked like a simple matter on the map I’d studied before setting out. But after hours of crawling first through maddening city traffic, then up a switchback road that climbed out of the smog-filled bowl of the Kathmandu Valley, we were still only beginning our journey, on a long, grinding descent to the Trishuli River.

Our driver, La La, and his young assistant took turns twisting every knob and dial on the dashboard. They had yet to master the operation of the air conditioner, so the windows were open to the scent of manure baking on the steep, terraced fields, and rotting plant matter where the jungle had not yet been slashed and burned. This vehicle is brand-new, La La said cheerfully. Only fifteen days, actually. A lot of the controls is unknown!

I was sitting in the backseat, next to Sanduk Ruit. Up front, Ruit’s wife, Nanda, leaned her forearms on the windowsill, her blue sari bright against the brown hillsides. Next to her sat one of their daughters. At seventeen, Serabla clearly asserted her status as a modern, emancipated woman. She wore Levi’s, running shoes, and a track jacket.

Not a bad way to travel, eh, Mommy, Ruit said to Nanda, who nodded dreamily. The white Land Cruiser had been a gift from a Chinese Australian donor, and Ruit was clearly delighted by it. When we began these remote surgical camps, we used to ride on the tops of buses with all our cases of gear, isn’t it?

Each blind turn down the mountain road took me farther from the wood-fired pizza and glass of wine at an Italian restaurant I’d been anticipating in the capital, a small reward I’d been promising myself to dilute the taste of my failed trip to the Khumbu. But when I met Ruit, at Tilganga, he was preparing to leave immediately for a rural area, to perform free cataract surgeries, and, impulsively, he invited me along. I had no sense of Tilganga’s merits as a hospital yet, and didn’t have a handle on Ruit either, but Tabin had been right about at least one thing: Sanduk Ruit was intimidating. He held his large, craggy head high over his barrel chest, and a thatch of thick black hair sat on top of his scalp like a heavy woolen hat. And though he was affectionate with his wife and daughter, he spoke to me gruffly. In brief sentences. Without meeting my eyes.

Ruit was treating our conversation like an interview, so I took out my notepad and conducted one. We’ll be operating for three days, he explained. With luck, we’ll see two hundred cases.

Why are we going to Rasuwa?

Because there are blind people there, Ruit said, without a trace of humor.

But why Rasuwa particularly? I asked, trying to keep the frustration from my voice.

Ruit exhaled, his eyelids lowered, indicating the effort it took to answer such an obvious question, and then he began to lecture. Rasuwa was one of the poorest regions of Nepal. The Tamang people who lived there were mostly subsistence farmers. Their lands were set unprofitably apart from the commercial center of Kathmandu, to the south, and the tourist magnet of the Khumbu, to the east. Ruit said he had conducted half a dozen free surgical camps in the area and still he was just draining an ocean of need, one teaspoon at a time. The Tamang of Rasuwa are the most downtrodden people on earth, he said. Also the most deserving.

I was weighing Ruit’s words when La La jammed the Land Cruiser’s brake pedal to the floor. A large Indian-made Tata bus, swinging wide around a hairpin turn, was bearing down on us. On its roof, dozens of wide-eyed passengers clutched goats, lambs, and children to their chests, bracing for impact as the bus’s brakes shrieked. The psychedelic-colored snout of the Tata drew closer, filling our windscreen completely. I could see, in slow motion, the silver T-shaped hood ornament homing in on us like the nose cone of a missile . . . and then the squealing of the Tata’s brakes went silent . . . and though only inches separated our bumpers, we were still intact. Flanking the Tata logo, someone had painted carefully, in flowing scarlet letters, See . . . You. As in See you again? I wondered, or See you in the next life? Both the Buddhists and the Hindus of Rasuwa believed, firmly, in reincarnation.

La La ground the gears, searching for reverse, then eased the Land Cruiser back, until we were pressed snug against a trash-strewn hillside, so the bus could pass. It inched forward, blowing hot diesel exhaust through our open windows. Are you all right, my dear? Ruit asked.

I presumed he was speaking to Nanda, until I realized he was examining me with the concern of a physician for a troubled patient.

Sure, I said, shaken. We’re still here.

We’re always here, Ruit said, laughing. But some conditions of existence are more painful than others.

Our brush with impermanence seemed to warm Ruit toward me, and to the task of telling the first few strands of his story. He was born in Olangchungola, a village built at ten thousand feet, near Kangchenjunga, a towering white wall in eastern Nepal, the world’s third-tallest mountain. Ruit’s father was a trader, leading horse and yak caravans to Tibet, bringing paint and rice and ready-made clothing up from the plains of India, and carrying yak-hair blankets, preserved meat, and salt down from the high plateau.

Olangchungola had no schools, so at age seven Ruit was sent away to study in India. I knew that being a backward fellow from the mountains, you see, I had to work hundred times as hard to prove myself, he said as we rolled past fields of Tamang women in bright red headscarves, stooping to plant rice, shoot by shoot. Ruit worked hard enough to earn a college scholarship and gain admission to one of Asia’s top medical schools.

We crossed the Trishuli, where another brightly colored Tata bus was parked in the shallows, the slow-moving current brushing its axles. The crew, stripped to their undershorts, flung buckets of tea-colored water against the dusty sides of the vehicle, washing it, while the passengers looked languidly out the windows or squatted on the hot metal roof, clutching their bundles, with a patience I found heartbreaking, a patience I could never quite muster, no matter how often I found myself in places where it was required.

Despite the trickling river, or perhaps because of its meagerness, the entire landscape looked scorched. Tamang women beating clothes against distant rocks blurred into points of color in the heat haze. And when we began to climb on the far side of the river, La La managed to raise the power windows only after we were all coated with a fine brick-colored dust. Up this dirt track on the other side of the river, into the parched hills of Rasuwa, the Land Cruiser bucked from side to side, crawling over boulders half the height of our tires. Every leaf, every twig along the roadside was filmed with red-brown dust. We rolled at walking pace, pressing our hands against the ceiling to stay in our seats.

The hours passed as we climbed, and I was lulled into daydreaming, staring at the houses of scavenged tin, the skimpy vegetable gardens hacked clear of bristling jungle, and bony cows tethered to posts by the more prosperous-looking homes. I thought about the endurance required to survive in a place like this. But where would you find the drive to do more than that? How much will and how many unlikely factors would have to line up, I wondered, to launch a boy from one of these homes to the frontier of medical innovation?

CHAPTER 2

Wound Construction

When facing two paths, if you are strong enough, always choose the hardest one.

—Nepalese proverb, repeated to Sanduk Ruit by his father, Sonam

I woke, rubbed the dust out of my eyes, and studied the soldiers blocking our way. Their Kalashnikovs were slung over their shoulders. They wore fatigue pants, blue windbreakers with red ironed-on hammers and sickles, and plastic shower sandals.

When Ruit rolled down the tinted window and showed his face, they stepped respectfully aside and opened an iron gate. After the solitude of the road, we pulled in to the courtyard of a concrete building where a crowd of expectant patients had gathered. Ruit said we had arrived in the village of Kalikasthan, at the heart of the Rasuwa District. I saw no buildings other than the one in front of which we parked. Rutted dirt trails led away from it into sparse eucalyptus and pine forest. The two-story cinder-block structure was a gift from Seventh-Day Adventists who had built it as a clinic, Ruit explained. The Maoists admired the solidity of the construction. They waited until the builders hung the fluorescent lights, bolted dentist’s chairs to the concrete floor, and installed Western toilets. Then they liberated the building by force and turned it into a makeshift military post.

Patients and their family members walking home from the Rasuwa camp. David Oliver Relin, 2008

The Maoists have a bad reputation, yet they’re not so unreasonable, Ruit said, climbing out of the Land Cruiser. They don’t like religion. But they appreciate architecture.

A few months earlier, being an American in Rasuwa might have been awkward, because the Bush administration had branded the Maoists terrorists after 9/11 and had supplied weapons to the government they were trying to overthrow. But while I was with Apa, Maoist candidates had successfully appealed to the long-suffering majority of the Nepalese people and swept the national elections. They’d fanned out across the country, even appearing in the high villages of the Khumbu on foot, carrying microphones and speakers powered by car batteries, and had given fiery speeches promising the 81 percent of the country’s citizens who labored as subsistence farmers a better life if they were in charge. Though they’d yet to hammer out the fine points of governance, the Maoists now ruled Nepal. What had started in the western district of Rolpa and had then spread to Rasuwa and other rural areas as an armed rebellion to free peasants from a powerful and wealthy Kathmandu elite now had to reinvent itself as a national party capable of improving the lives of the poor. Perhaps that’s one reason why they’d allowed Ruit to turn their military post into a temporary eye hospital.

Ruit left to scrub for surgery, and I picked my way through the crowd of women in red and orange saris and men in topis and turbans, gripping hand-carved canes. On the unlit second floor I found Ruit’s advance team hard at work processing a long line of patients, who shuffled forward with varying degrees of vision. I saw not only elderly people but children as young as five, their arms extended for balance, slowly groping their way along.

In wealthy countries, cataracts, the clouding of the clear lens of the eye, typically affect older people. But in the developing world, poor nutrition, exposure to unfiltered ultraviolet rays, and the numbing range of physical traumas afflicting those who live at the subsistence level, compounded by a lack of basic medical care, all combine to make cataracts the leading cause of preventable blindness among the world’s poor. That was who filled the second floor of this temporary hospital: the world’s poor. The line of patients inched politely onward, oblivious to any Western notion of personal space, the chest of one person pressing into the bony shoulder blades of the next. The cloying smell of body odor and infection clung to many of the patients like the patched and sun-faded clothing most of them wore. Their battered hands and feet were maps of hardship. Though most had walked hours on rocky trails for the right to wait in this dank cement room, many were barefoot.

As they cleared the line, Ruit’s staff prepped each patient for surgery. A female medical technician gently trimmed eyelashes with a pair of tapered scissors. Others simply scrubbed Rasuwa’s red dust from patients’ faces.

Patients being prepared for cataract surgery at Rasuwa. David Oliver Relin, 2008

Beside a door leading to the operating room, a small video monitor sat on the floor. On the screen, with a clarity I hoped the visually impaired patients couldn’t discern, a crescent-shaped blade pierced a large, unblinking eyeball.

The Nepalese waiting their turn beneath that blade stared calmly at the screen for a moment or two at a time, or chatted with their neighbors. Ruit told me that when he began working in rural Nepal, more than two decades earlier, rumors that he practiced enucleation—that is, removing the entire eyeball—had frightened prospective patients away. I put the monitor there so my trainees can watch, but also because it relaxes the patients, Ruit explained. They see that cataract surgery is in fact a very simple procedure, and they know what to expect.

I squatted next to two boys, nine and thirteen, who couldn’t be anything but brothers. They were both squinting at the monitor and leaning their heads together while the younger boy, whose cataracts were less mature, described the surgery. With Ruit’s daughter Serabla translating, I asked them their names and ages. Birbahadur, the thirteen- year-old, interrupted to ask why we weren’t speaking Nepali.

You see, his cataracts are so advanced he can’t tell you’re a foreigner, Serabla said.

Voices raised in alarm drew my eyes to a thin, stooped woman wearing a ginger-colored silk blouse and a long, pink floral guneo, clothes noticeably finer than most of her peers’, who stumbled as she was called to the eyelash station. She clutched at the air in front of her wildly and would have fallen if her husband hadn’t rushed to steady her and lead her carefully across the room. The woman walked with the painful, jackknifed posture of someone with osteoporosis and clutched his arm like a life preserver.

Her name was Patali Nepali, she said, inclining her head in the direction of my voice. Her hair was long and dark, silvered with age, and tied back neatly with a ribbon. I looked into her eyes. She would have been beautiful if not for the pale, milky orbs the size of marbles where her irises would have been. I could see myself reflected on the blank surfaces, squatting in front of her. She wore an orange tikka at the center of her forehead, which Hindus believe stimulates the growth of the third eye. Certainly, her other two weren’t doing her much good.

Wheezing asthmatically as she spoke, Patali said that she came from a village well over an hour’s walk away, in a range of hills visible to our west. I’d assumed she was elderly, but she told me she was fifty-six and had spent most of her life as a seamstress. She’d worked until a year earlier, she said, her skills steadily deteriorating, until she was forced to admit she could no longer see well enough to sew. With the family reduced to one income, they tried to live on her husband’s earnings as a woodcutter and hired laborer; they were Damai, members of one of the lowest, the untouchable castes, and owned no land themselves. They’d been forced to sell off many of their possessions, including their only cow, to feed their five children.

This last year, Patali said, I can do nothing useful. My own children have to wash me like a child. So we have been hungry. I eat only in the morning, but still there is never enough for my family.

A few weeks before our conversation, their eldest son, a seventeen-year-old on his way to Kathmandu to look for work, was injured in a bus accident. He’d been riding in the cheapest seat, on the roof, when the bus collided with a cement truck. Her son was more fortunate than some. He was thrown clear of the wreck but broke both his legs. I was obliged to sell the last fine thing in my home to pay his medical bills, Patali told me. My sewing machine.

I asked her husband how he had brought Patali to Rasuwa. We took a taxi, he said. I realized how few vehicles I’d seen on the climb to Rasuwa and wondered if a village tucked even farther into these hills was reachable by road. Basket taxi, he said, laughing, pointing to his strong woodcutter’s back. I’m the taxi!

Ruit’s team had done their best to turn a filthy military post into a sterile operating theater. They’d slit open black plastic trash bags and taped them over broken windows. Next to extinct fluorescent fixtures, bare lightbulbs hung over the two operating tables from extension cords cleverly taped to the ceiling. Cables snaked past medical equipment crowded into the room, toward a generator outdoors. The generator also powered the most critical equipment, two Zeiss surgical microscopes that had been delicately transported from Kathmandu.

Behind a mask, in a green gown and white latex gloves, Ruit seemed even more intimidating. But when he saw me, he waved me over warmly. Come here, stand beside me, David, he said. This is a rather challenging case. I stepped over a tangle of cables and balanced behind Ruit’s left shoulder, my feet pressed together on a small patch of clear concrete, between a rusty fan plugged in to a power strip with bare wires and a bucket full of blood-soaked things I didn’t want to look at too carefully.

I tried to meet the one functioning eye of the elderly-looking man on the table, but he couldn’t see me. He was thin and grizzled and wore a necklace of heavy amber beads smoothed by time. In one socket, only a scarred blue-white mass remained from a youthful farming accident. The other eye was blinded by a large cataract. When I read his chart, I learned that Thulo Bahadur was fifty-two, another lesson in the way hardship can sculpt human features. Ruit asked me to remove the man’s orange-and-pink cotton topi. When I did I saw how rarely, except to sleep, he must have taken the cap off. The skin on Thulo’s forehead was several shades lighter than his browned and deeply lined

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Recenzii

I received this book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers Program quite a while ago. This book was excellent and I'm so glad that I finally read it. It manages to combine two of my favorite genres, hiking/mountain climbing books and books about inspiring medical/community service work. I'd describe this book as Into Thin Air meets Mountains Beyond Mountains. This book tells the story of two doctors who develop a (relatively) simple, straightforward, and portable method for repairing cataracts. They then proceed to take skills and supplies to where they're needed most, even if this involves dirt roads and strenuous hiking. It's inspiring to see how one great idea can start from nothing and be scaled up to the point that it changes thousands of lives for the better. The storyteller himself is engaging and despite being a fairly long read, I was intrigued throughout the entire thing.

I found this book about two men and their attempt to eradicate blindness on a global scale truly inspiring. I loved reading about the Himalayan Cataract Project and its founders Sanduk Ruit and Geoff Tabin. What I will remember more than anything is that for a mere $20 these surgeons can restore a person's sight with a procedure that takes less than 10 minutes. The book provides ample biographical details on both mens' lives and is a long, somewhat slow read. At times, I felt that the author allowed himself to go off on tangents. Geoff Tabin is a skilled mountain climber and certainly can be classified as a maverick. The parts of the parts of the book dedicated to his story were a bit laborious for me. Which brings me to the point that this book is essentially a number of books under one cover: we have two comprehensive biographies, the development of Ruit's surgical technique, and the foundation and growth of the Himalayan Cataract Project as a worldwide organization dedicated to the elimination of blindness. Both men are characterized as incredibly brave and tenacious with unwavering commitment to their goal. I would love to see them in action. The book definitely motivated me to donate to this cause.On a side note, I received a cover letter from the publisher with this early reviewer's edition. I was so saddened to hear that the author, David Oliver Relin of Three Cups of Tea fame, had taken his own life in 2012. May he rest in peace.

Truly outstanding

Recommend. Great narrator (audiobook). If this book had been about Sanduk Ruit only, I think I'd have given it 4-stars... from a hard childhood and sad sibling deaths this boy Sanduk figures out his goal in life is to rid countries of unnecessary blindness - the rest of the story shows a slightly overbearing but single-minded adventure in making this goal come true. Awesome, though it's kinda hard to read about his rigidness. Anyway, unfortunately there's another person involved, Captain America... oh, wait, I mean... Geoffrey Tabin, who just makes me embarrassed to be an American... a condensed caricature of insufferable american privilege, the fawning, gushing, adulation from the author is cringe-worthy. It's really really hard to read and the gushing goes on seemingly for-ever... why, smart-as-Einstein Mr Tabin does magic tricks for little kids while rescuing common peasants and leaping over buildings in his tennis shorts (ah, but wait, his shorts are wrinkled... how unconventional he is!). Anyway, if you can get through that then this book really is quite incredible - makes me want to learn more about the project (which I'm sure is the idea).

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. At times, the chronology of the plot was confusing and I felt like the author jumped around a tad, but this book did a good job of portraying health care and overall living standard in other parts of the world. I felt like if I would have read this book at an earlier age, it would have peaked my interest to explore careers that deal specifically with the underprivileged in other parts of the world.The book was sometimes tedious to read. I never really felt like I HAD to finish what I was reading and I had no problem letting the book go for days at a time.

Well researched story of the collaboration of two doctors, Nepalese and American to stamp out blindness in the Himalayas. Author was the pen behind Three Cups of Tea and he tells a wonderful uplifting story here. In addition to profiling the two doctors it covers the new surgical technique to counteract cataracts, and covers some mountain climbing in Nepal. Recommended for all who doubt people can still make a tremendous impact in the world with their actions.

This is a truly amazing story of two doctors who really care. I mean they REALLY care about people, so much that they have made personal sacrifices to help rid the world of preventable blindness among the world's poorest people. If they did not have adequate supplies, or if the supplies were too expensive, they found a way to produce them at such a reduced rate that it makes you realize how much medical treatment is dictated more by how much money or insurance a person has than by need, at least in our part of the world.The book goes into detail about the lives of the two doctors and how they happened to cross paths; if you're interested in mountain climbing, you will love this story. The dedication, determination and resolution of Dr. Geoffrey Tabin and Dr. Sanduk Ruit is inspiring.The author died in the fall of 2012; the world lost a great writer and a dedicated journalist.

Second Suns was an inspirational book to read and I wish I had become a doctor! Sad to read about David Oliver Relin and his short life - I enjoyed his book. The doctors are two very different characters and I suppose their opposites feed off each other. I have found many obnoxious individuals appear to stand above all others. Dr. Sanduk Ruit seems to be one of these people. He has done great things to help his people. Dr. Geoffrey Tabin seems to have found his place in the world and together they have truly helped prevent blindness for many. If only more of these people help those less fortunate, we would have a better world.

I really liked this book. It was interesting to see how two doctors from two such different places and upbringings and personalities came together to really make a difference in the world. It was very readable. My only complaint would be there were a couple of places where the story jumped enough to make me check and see if I missed a page, but it certainly wasn't enough of an annoyance that I wouldn't recommend this to anyone interested in medicine or memoirs or India.

Second Suns is the incredible story of two eye surgeons, their unlikely friendship, and their joint mission to heal the developing world of blindness. The author is the late David Oliver Relin who accompanied Dr. Ruit and Dr. Tabin on their track across the Nepalese mountains to perform cataract surgeries in remote villages. It's very inspiring to read about the courage and dedication of these two doctors and their teams. Often times they would hike through the mountains for days before setting up their eye camps to perform surgery. Not being able to see is difficult in any environment but living in the mountains without any vision is a terrible hardship. However, thanks to Drs. Ruit and Tabin many people from the developing world have gotten a second chance at life.This book was beautifully written and it will touch anyone who reads it. Additionally, if you are interested in a more visual picture I can recommend the documentary "Out of the Darkness" that was made about Dr. Ruit and his team.

I feel so much gratitude for the doctors of this world who are willing to put riches aside and actually do good for the human race. The doctors featured in this book definitely fall into that category. I also have respect for the author who traveled along with the Himalayan Cataract Project in order to learn first hand what this organization is all about. I liked that it was a narrative rather than just him giving a report of the subjects. Relin spent years getting to know these doctors and their mission, and even though he was not performing the surgeries, it seemed that he was right there in the action, helping out any way he could. I loved reading about the journey that both doctors took to eventually meet and bring this dream to life. It's incredible that they bring these make-shift hospitals literally over mountains to cure the blindness in some areas. The success stories were my personal favorite parts of the book. Every time the bandages were lifted and the patient's sight was restored... it got me every time! I took one star off because the reading became a little stagnant toward the end. It got a little repetitious and seemed that it could have been shortened a bit. Otherwise it was a great read and brought back some of my faith in humanity.

This is a real written book about 2 surgeons who set out to heal the eyesight of the remote villages. It was a very uplifting book that was hard to put down. These two men who put everything else aside to help the people that were not able to get the proper medical attention. It is hard to see where you are going in some of these mountain ranges and they made it possible for so many to do that. A great read for anyone who needs an uplifting book.

Second Suns is the moving, unforgettable story of how two men with a shared dream are changing the world, one pair of eyes at a time.

Very inspirational! Well written and you can feel the emotions of the doctors while reading the book.

The story presented in Second Suns is extraordinary and inspiring. Doctors Ruit and Tabin, profiled in the book, have restored sight to thousands of cataract patients in Nepal and around the world. Relin's account of their work and how they developed and exported their cost-effective surgical technique is fascinating. But... not quite 400+ pages fascinating. At least not to me. I would have enjoyed this book more if a greater percentage of those pages had been used to profile the patients. What were their lives like before surgery? And after? How had their families managed? What is life like in their villages? These questions are addressed in a cursory way, but I wish the book had delved deeper. But, as the subtitle states, the story really focuses on the doctors themselves: their histories, their lives and relationships, their education, how they met and formed their partnership, their work in medicine and in funding their hospital, expanding their reach and disseminating their technique.I won a copy of this book through LibraryThing's early reviewers program. Thank you Random House and LibraryThing!

David Oliver Relin tells an incredible story of the works of Drs. Ruit and Tabin in their bid to cure blindness in the Himalyas. With minimal technological equipment and strong fortitude, they are able to accomplish an amazing amount of good that is best measured by the quality of life they give back to their patients. The road these two doctors are on is not easy and the symbolism of the physical mountains they climb to the struggles of bringing their dream to reality is not lost on the reader. The author was challenged to keep up with their incredible stamina. In a world where bad news more often makes it to the front page, Relin provides us with an enjoyable and uplifting story.

I really enjoyed this book. I would definetely recommend this book to everyone. It will remind you of just how good you have it, and how we can all pitch in to help others. I love the way the book is written and the emotion with which David Relin tells the story of two amazing doctors. It is a shame that an author like David Relin is no longer with us.This book makes you wish that you were with these doctors every time they restored someone's sight.The miracle that these doctors are bringing to the lives of hundreds of people every day will cement their names and their legacy in history.

It has been often said that one person can make a difference. This is true in the lives of Doctor Sanduk Ruit and Dr. Geoff Tabin. Both these men have had the determination to enable thousands, if not millions of people around the world, to see again. With his cutting edge surgery techniques, Dr. Ruit, an opthomologist, has almost perfected cataract removal in people who have become blinded by them. Dr. Tabin, also an opthomologist, works with Dr. Ruit to train other doctors in these live-giving surgeries, as well as, aiding people in the recovery from preventable blindness. The book allows the reader to travel with both men, from their childhoods, to the present, learning what motivated them to become the people they are today. In a world of materialism and blind ambition, we see two men, drawn together by one vision, of helping others have a second chance at life. What a message of hope and encouragment!

This was an excellent true story (comprised of many stories within) that shows how it is quite possible to change the world, one set of eyes at a time. Both Geoff Tabin and Sanduk Ruit are men way ahead of their time and impervious to "how things are supposed to be done" creating new, more cost effective and better (re: results and helping people) ways of curing preventable blindness in developing parts of the world. The other brilliant piece of this that is pretty quiet, is how the doctors were able to set up clinics, labs and lens manufacturing sites that not only helping but employing the people of the regions. That, in turn, engages the governments to provide not only aid, but to leave the surgeons to do their work (and not get enmeshed in the political dramas that often went on in many of the countries Tabin and Ruit helped). So they are self sustaining, by the folks of the country, and that is a HUGE difference to the majory of NGO books I have read over the last 5-10 years. It also shows the huge amount of waste, political entanglement and greed that has choked the U.S. medical system - simply by showing a better way. Of interest and kind of a laugh is that the developing countries wisely choose not to pattern their burgeoning systems on the U.S. (due to its failure and being seen as ER/catastrophic care - not simple whole body care) and instead looked to Sweden, England and other countries. There is a really poignant part where Dr. Nkurikiye (from Rwanda) shadows a surgeon to learn here in the U.S. After one minor surgery he looks in the garbage can and says, I could save 100 people with your garbage alone. The book spends a lot of time in Nepal, where Dr. Ruit hails from - from its mountain culture and tourism to the struggles of its people. The author really got into the doctors' worlds, frustrations and joys both, from Nepal, India, Bhutan and Tibet to Rwanda and Ethiopia. Both doctors are almost surreal in their energy, drive and intelligence, and while not devoid of quirks and demands, still, both have sacrificed their lives for what they are doing. I could not help feeling how bittersweet this book is because of Relin's recent suicide. Part of what I loved was sharing his journey too, how he learned about selflessness, what "giving" meant and he dug right in helping ease the patients waiting for (and completing) surgeries. That said it was never "all about Relin" - just the education he had in the face of these two amazing men and what he learned. I highly recommend this book, on many levels,

I won this as a Library Thing Early Reviewer copy and I'm so glad I had a chance to read it. I had heard great things about the author's earlier book Three Cups of Tea (it's actually on my to-read list). The writing style for this took a little while to get used to, but I eventually got into the flow of events. The book was truly inspirational, and you could really tell the author put a lot of passion into his work. I thought the discussions about cultural differences (i.e. burial rites, various beliefs on organ donation, reincarnation, etc...) were really interesting to read about. I would highly recommend this book if you like inspirational, nonfiction books.

Second Suns discusses the work of two doctors, one American and one Nepalese, on the astonishing Himalayan Cataract Project, which has to be one of the most amazing bang-for-the-buck medical programs in the world. For about $20 USD, they can perform cataract surgeries to restore sight to people stricken with cataracts at young ages, sometimes in childhood. The book discusses each doctor’s work individually, providing background and context, as well as the work of the project. I found Dr. Tabin (the American) to be somewhat irritating, and the sections focused on him in the US were the weakest part of the book for me. Dr. Ruit was much more compelling, and the discussion of the work of the project in Nepal itself was truly riveting - working in astonishingly primitive conditions, with little equipment, and managing to restore sight in a fraction of the time and for a fraction of the cost of what Western hospitals would require. Astonishingly, after a few years the CHP actually began to run out of easy cases in Nepal, and began to venture farther afield, to Bhutan and Africa and even North Korea. (The first place I had heard about the CHP was in a documentary about North Korea, talking about the Nepalese doctors visiting the country for a few weeks to restore people’s sight.)This is inspiring and encouraging in the same way that Three Cups of Tea was for many people, with the additional virtue of taking fewer liberties with the truth.

Second Suns—Two Doctors and Their Amazing Quest to Restore Sight and Save Lives. By David Oliver Relin. Once again, David Relin, co-author of Three Cups of Tea takes us on a journey to the Himalayas. This time we meet two dedicated, but wildly different physicians, Dr. Geoffrey Tabin and Dr. Sanduk Ruit.Few of us realize the grinding poverty suffered by so many in the world; fewer yet try to do anything to relieve that suffering. Blindness makes a difficult life near impossible in the rugged terrain of the Himalayas, so people suffering from cataracts can’t work, can’t even leave their homes without the assistance of their families. Sadly cataracts are even more prevalent in the high, thin mountain air.This is an engaging tale told in meticulous detail. As uplifting as it is concerning. Forty million people in the world are blink; 161 million are severely visually disabled. Reportedly three quarters could have their sight restored if only they had access to the same level of care as those of us living in developed countries. Second Sons delivers many examples of the joy Ruit and Tabin have brought to thousands. They perfected low cost and efficient high quality methods for treating cataracts and corneal transplants and devised ways to bring those treatments to remote locations. They have expanded their skills beyond Nepal to Rwanda, Ethiopia and other African countries through the Himalayan Cataract Project (HCP)

Second Suns: Two Doctors and Their Amazing Quest to Restore Sight and Save LivesMr. David Oliver Relin tells a compelling story about two doctors, one from America and one from Nepal, who spend their lives restoring sight to indigent people of the Himalayas and Africa. Relin spent four years traveling with the doctors, driving along winding mountainous roads, trekking over peaks, and rolling up his sleeves to help out during the surgeries. Second Suns is obviously a book that Relin recognized needed to be written, as his editor notes on the flyleaf. The book is well written, very well researched, and engaging. Relin tells the story of two extraordinary men who share a mission to eliminate preventable blindness in developing regions. Drs. Tabin and Ruit work tirelessly, taking hospital equipment to remote regions to operate on thousands of people who have cataracts and other visual conditions, giving sight to people who haven’t seen their loved ones in decades. One mother had never seen her three youngest children. The joy the mother felt at seeing her children’s faces for the first time could be felt through the author’s joy as well. The author does a commendable job of bringing the passion of the doctors' work to the reader.

Opthamologists Geoffrey Tabin and Sanduk Ruit have a lofty goal: to eradicate preventable blindness amongst the poorest people in the world. Coming from two very different backgrounds, Dr. Tabin and Dr. Ruit came together to share their common passion: restoration of sight. In some countries, cataracts are not just an “old age” disease, but frequently form in children due to the lack of nutrition and medical care. Stories are told of patients who’ve walked for days to a traveling clinic, led through their personal darkness by a family member along narrow winding paths. With their sight restored, people are again able to return to work and to see the faces of their beloved family members. Long days of eye repair procedures done in crumbling, filthy structures are followed by post-op days. These days are filled with laughter and tears, as patient’s bandages are removed and eyes that were unseeing only days before have been given the gift of sght again. I could not help but to shed a tear or two as I read about the overwhelming joy these people felt when they realized that their sight had been restored.I thoroughly enjoyed Second Suns. Daivd Relin is a masterful storyteller, and he has a magical way of putting phrases together to paint marvelous word pictures. I learned a great deal from this book, and,, like the patients of Drs. Ruit and Dr. Tabin, my eyes have been opened to adventures that I didn’t know existed. There was rarely a chapter that I did not stop to share a new tidbit of information with my family . It had never occurred to me that there are so many unfortunate people who are completely blind simply because of the lack of access to a simple eye surgery.Despite my love of the book, there was a dark shadow that hung over my reading throughout. Mr Relin passed away before the book was published, and It saddens me to think that I will never have the opportunity to read more by this gifted author.

Second Suns by David Relin is an exceptionally inspirational book and one I would not hesitate to all readers and discussion groups, especially to those who do not typically read memoirs, it truly is that good of a book. Relin not only takes the reader deep into Nepal and the traditions and peoples of Nepal, but also introduces the reader to two exceptional Opthalmogists, Dr. Geoffrey Tabin and Dr. Sanduk Ruit, whose works on the Himalayan Cataract Project is nothing short of inspirational. I am thankful I had an opportunity to read Second Suns and as I mentioned at the start, I highly recommend Relin’s expertly written book, Second Suns.

Second Suns by the late David Relin is a book about two extraordinary ophthalmologists, one from a village in Nepal so small that it boasts no school and another the son of the first scientist to examine the center of the test blast of the world’s first nuclear explosion. These two doctors, Sanduk Ruit and Geoffrey Tabin, respectively, have put their boundless energy and expertise together to treat preventable blindness in parts of the world where the patients have no access or money to seek treatment.As someone who suffered from younger-than-usual cataracts in my 40s, I was thrilled to read of the miraculous cures people, who were far more blinded than I, experienced at the hands of these doctors. I know the joy of seeing added color and detail, but many of their patients hadn’t been able to tell light from dark except for the warmth of the sun on their skin.The background stories of these two doctors are amazing as they hurdle incredible odds and their own maverick personalities to become doctors who can perform routine cataract surgeries in 4 minutes in the most primitive places on earth.The descriptions of the the surgeries aren’t for the faint of heart, but well worth it to understand what a service these men are offering to patients who could not previously venture from their homes on mountain precipices or be anything but a “mouth without hands” to their families. Well written and engaging, I would recommend this as proof that a true story is far more captivating than fiction.

Second Suns chronicles the mission of two Doctors, Geoffrey Tabin from the U.S. and Sanduk Ruit, from Nepal, who worked arduously to remove cataracts from the eyes of impoverished villagers in Nepal. There were certain parts of the book that were more interesting than others. Those parts to me centered around the background of Sanduk Ruit who founded the Himalayan Cataract Project and his motivation. The parts that described in details of the cataract removal surgery were riveting. Ruit deftly and rapidly removed many cataracts and was training doctors from other countries to perform the surgeries so that they could start their own programs. The most touching parts described the hardships if the patients living blind, the plight of the patients getting to the clinics, and their reactions after the surgeries. Another interesting part was the description of another project the doctors started which was removing the cataracts from the dead and how they needed to change the cultural stigma of removing a body part from the dead. The book chapters alternate locations, telling the story of Tabin in the U.S. and then Ruit in Nepal and seems to jump around in time which makes it hard to follow. The story probably would have been able to follow if it was written chronologically. The parts that described Tabin were not that interesting to me although I tried to be engaged. The book did feel too long at 400 pages. The book maybe tries to be too much – part climbing book, part biography, part non-profit how to guide, part cultural narrative, and part medical narrative, etc. Ultimately, the book does show that the dedication of two people can make a difference in the lives of many. This is an inspirational story that touches the lives of patients and readers.

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