Ma Think Khing
Ma Think Khing is 18 years old. She comes from a village near Mandalay in Burma. She suffers from an umbilical hernia and also rheumatic heart disease. Her father works as a farmer collectively with people in the village. Her mother works as a ‘mobile’ shop keeper – selling vegetables from a large container which she balances on her head. Sometimes she earns about 2,000 Kyat a day (US$2). Other days she earns nothing.
When Ma Think Khing was thirteen years old, she had a puffy face and a generalized oedema in her abdomen. Before this, she suffered from severe joint pain. She could not walk. She went to a clinic in Zarya Gyi, Burma and they told her that she needed to prevent rheumatic fever by having one injection a week for three weeks. After the injections, her whole body was full of fluid and when she pushed the surface of her skin, water came out. She also had a cough. Her family then looked to traditional Burmese medicine for help. After two days, she got diarrhea and the oedema improved. She appeared to get better however her belly button started to grow and get bigger and bigger. It developed into an umbilical hernia. After a year her parents took her to a bigger clinic in Taung Ngu Clinic. The doctor told her father that she had heart disease and they needed to admit her. However, her family did not have the money so they could not have her admitted. They got some medicine from the clinic and returned home. They had three follow-ups at the clinic and received medicine each time. Each time they went, the medicine was very expensive. Eventually they could not afford to go back. Ma Think Khing had no choice but to stay at home. When she suffered from oedema (accumulation of fluid beneath the skin) her father would go and buy medicine to try and make her feel better. She had to stop attending school when she was in 6th standard (12 years old) because of her deteriorating health condition.
A family friend came to work in Mae Sot on the Thai-Burma border. When they returned to Ma Think Khing’s village, they told her family about the Mae Tao Clinic. Her father brought her to Mae Sot. It cost 25,000 Kyat (US$25) and it took 3-days to reach Mae Sot by train and in the back of a utility vehicle. The family had four goats but they had to sell two of them to cover the cost of traveling from their village in Burma to Thailand.
They arrived in Mae Sot in October 2009 and they came straight to the Mae Tao Clinic where Ma Think Khing was admitted to the In-Patient Department. Medics at the Clinic did blood tests and confirmed heart disease.
Ma Think Khing suffers physically because of the large hernia on her stomach and she has trouble walking. Her hernia is very painful and causes back pain. She also has difficulty breathing when she walks and she has to rest often. Her speech is very quiet due to fatigue and her voice acquired a raspy sound about six months ago. She is eating well but at night she gets nausea and cannot sleep very well.
Her condition has exacerbated the family’s already dire financial position. Being subsistence farmers, they only produce enough food to eat with a few extra vegetables to sell. Ma Think Khing is the baby of the family and her dedicated father has stopped work to bring her to Mae Sot for treatment. Her mother has stayed in Burma to keep working selling vegetables.
Her father wants her to get better so that she can continue her education. He wants to stay in Mae Sot and make sure his daughter gets treatment. They are staying at the clinic because it is too far to return to their village. He is very worried about losing his daughter.
Ma Think Khing really wants to continue school. However, she is shy and feels embarrassed because she has already missed a lot of school and her friends have nearly finished. So instead she wants to be able to go back to Burma healthy and help her mother with the cooking and selling of vegetables.
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