Christian's Story
Written on July 15, 1999 by Nancy Sullivan

Christian Dominic is a Yimas Villager from a tributary of the Sepik River in east Sepik Province. I've known his family for years now (there's a photo here of me looking very off-the-rack amidst Christian's uncles), and they sent the teenager up to Goroka to live with me in 1998. He was almost entirely blind, and had been for several years. As a small kid, someone had speared his left eye beyond repair, and then some years later, his right cornea became infected and scarred. In the village he functioned fine, and could walk bush tracks without a problem even though he had barely shadow vision in one eye left. The eye doctor in Goroka wasn't very optimistic, though. The chances were slim of a cornea transplant here in PNG, and his eye looked likely to reject one in any case. We were told to accept the inevitable. But Christian couldn't believe there was no hope left, and we decided to pursue cornea transplants on the internet.

It was through Maddy Flynn and Sight Saver's International that we finally were put in touch with Randy Poynter of the Price-Whitson Vision Group in Indianapolis, Indiana. After we had received diverse advice from doctors and institutions in Australia, the States and elsewhere, this was the first concrete response. They offered to perform the transplant at a reduced rate if we could get to Indianapolis. So we started fundraising.

So many people contributed to this months-long project, it would be inadequate to just say a collective thank you. I list everyone at the end of this message. Even though many charitable institutions had good advice, virtually none could offer material assistance. Were it not for scores of generous individuals, none of this would have happened. And many times, it very nearly didn't happen. But just after New Year's 2000, everything conspired to get Christian under the knife, and we flew to Indianapolis in late January. We had just met a group of tourists from DC and Indianapolis down on the Karawari River, Christian's home, and they became the final, most important ingredient to making things happen. Patrick Tynan, (there's a shot here of Patrick with Christian in the hotel room) with the help of Joyce Stow, organized and donated our hotel stay in Indianapolis, and with Barbara May, and Joan Curts (dancing recklessly at the Karwari Lodge in this photo), who donated money from the Indiana University Alumni magazine, they made us feel welcome and pampered.

Due to separate airline discounts, Christian had flown alone from Manila to LA on Northwest Airlines, while I took Philippines Air and met him at LAX. This was no small hurdle for a kid who had barely been out of his village only a year before. But it was nothing to the courage it took him to finally go through with the surgery, after the nurses at the Vision Group explained all the possible complications to him on that first day we arrived. "Maski," he said to me leaving their office. "Nau mi les." Forget it, I don't want to do it. But later that evening we decided that the momentum had built to an inevitability behind this and it just had to happen. So, January 27th Dr. Francis Price gave Christian a new cornea.

That evening they covered the surgery on the local TV news, complete with a groggy post-op interview with Christian and Dr. Price (check out the photo). The following day, a nurse removed his bandage as friends and newspaper reporters waited expectantly. Somehow we'd all assumed his eyesight would be instantaneous. But, like plastic surgery, it takes weeks to know what you've got, and the minute the bandage came off and Christian found himself as blind as ever, his face dropped to the ground. We all had to be assured that he'd see in a few days. The Indianapolis Star photographer captured the anticlimactic moment in a shot of Christian accompanying their story (http://www.starnews.com/news/citystate/2000/jan/0129st_cornea.html).

I cannot say enough about the Price-Whitson Vision Group. Not only did all the doctors and nurses involved donate their services, but they took extra care to make Christian feel welcome. Here was this kid who barely spoke English, from some far away place, being strapped to a gurney with an IV in one arm and oxygen in his nose. They stood by him and held his hand throughout. Christian, heroically, went through the entire operation awake.

The eye has healed fast and well, thanks to Dr. Price's tight sutures of course. We spent several weeks recovering in LA, where Dr. Kristin Nesburn donated her gently encouraging post-op care. Dr. Scott Wagenberg, who'd assisted Dr. Price, sent us a batch of eyedrop samples, which constituted a whole year's supply of medicine. Christian has always taken his eye drops religiously, and he soon began wearing clear glasses to protect the eye. Eventually he was reading 4, then 6 lines on the eye chart.

Our friends were infinitely kind to us in LA. They took us out, took us in, treated Christian like visiting royalty, and facilitated thing he'd never hoped to want. Brad Taylor flew in from NY and palled around with us for a day. Leigh Johnson and Tom Wright, and their kids Eamon and Rae, were our second family, and Tom took Christian to a basketball game, to lunch, and out for a fade at the barber shop a couple of times. Christian quickly developed a kind of idol worship for him. Muriel and Bill O'Reilly were like godparents, taking us out to eat, inviting us over, taking an astounded Christian to the Long Beach Aquarium and the Queen Mary (see the shot of Bill and Christian at the Queen Mary). They also introduced us to Yolanda Adelson, who understood that Christian was an aspiring keyboard player and, as a keyboard player herself, managed to get us a fantastic discount on a state-of-the-art Yamaha with Merrill Leeds of Merrill's Music in Santa Barbara. The money for the keyboard had been donated by a woman named Moselle Schaeffer in Indianapolis, who read about Christian in the paper and just wanted to contribute. So, between Moselle, Yolanda and Merill, this kid's dream of a professional-standard instrument came true.

Yoldana also set us up with Gerda Govine who interviewed Christian for his public radio show, Ebony 2000, and made Christian feel like a bona fide celebrity. She also gave him his first and only book, a story of Kareem Abdul-Jabar, which I'm really pleased to say he can, if slowly, now read .

Now we're back in Madang and Christian's rehearsing with his cousins on his new keyboard, hoping to cut a demo tape soon. His eye gets better and better every day.

We thank everyone for making this happen. It really wouldn't have happened without everyone's contribution.

For their very important donations, we thank: