Sonia, a welfare project patient

31/10/2017

Sonia arrived just over a year ago and she couldn’t open her eyes. She had a consultation at another centre where they diagnosed her with Sjögren’s syndrome. They told her that she was going to go blind and they advised her to seek psychiatric help so she could learn to accept her new circumstances.

She thought she’d never see her children again. Encouraged by her family, she came to our centre.

She initially came to us as a welfare project patient.

Due to her lengthy treatment and financial situation, her exemplary social worker helped her to apply for access to the Foundation grant programme.

Once her case was assessed and accepted, Sonia was operated on by Dr. de la Paz and Dr. Álvarez de Toledo, who obtained good results on both eyes.

Sonia explains: “Since I arrived at the Barraquer Centre of Ophthalmology, my life has radically changed. I remember the first time I saw how my son moved. I had to ask him to move again just so I could check that the shadows really were my son”.

She was very pleasantly surprised by the treatment of all the staff at the Clinic and could “see that behind the doctors lie real people, who give humane treatment to their patients”.