Gricel's Fight for Sight

End Date: Mar 22, 2013 12:00 AM

In March 2012, the Patient Referral team began working with Gricel Ferrera, an energetic, smiley, and studious 14-year old from the community of La Concepción. Gricel’s family got in contact with the Referral team by sending a note with the Water Brigades team in March 2012 to deliver to the program lead.

The Referral team visited with Gricel and her family in their home to have a preliminary consultation and to obtain more information regarding her condition. Gricel had been diagnosed with a degenerative disorder in both of her eyes called keratoconus. This condition causes the cornea to become cone-shaped, which leads to distorted vision, such as multiple images of the same object and sensitivity to light. If she does not receive transplants for both of her corneas, it is predicted that Gricel will become completely blind by the time she is 18 years old.

Good news came to Gricel a lot sooner than anticipated. On May 1st, Hospital Santa Lucia received a cornea for another case of ours, which money had already been raised to cover, but this patient decided to not follow through with his surgery. So instead, two days later, Gricel was able to receive a cornea transplant for her left eye. Gricel’s surgery was successful and she was brought back to the hospital during the days following her surgery to receive post-op care and examination.

We are half way toward freeing Gricel of her degenerative condition and we hope with your support we will be able to help her fully overcome it. The University of Connecticut worked incredibly hard during summer 2011 and successfully raised enough money to pay for one cornea transplant.

We are very close to our goal for being able to get a cornea transplant for her right eye! The breakdown of the costs are listed below:

$2700: cornea transplant
$175: exams

$125: transportation to/from exams and surgery


**We would also like to thank Kansas City Medical Brigade for their incredibly generous donation of $937.55 in memory of Jim D. Hill.**


For more information, please contact Patient Referral program developer, Courtney Ferreira, at courtney@globalbrigades.org.