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DAW MOE MOE - 20 years old

Post-treatment profile

Moe Moe has recently returned from a second trip to Chiang Mai, for a follow up consultation after having a hip replacement in February 2007. She first arrived at Mae Tao Clinic on January 20th 2007 and has been either at the clinic or at Chiang Mai Hospital since.

Moe Moe skidded off her bicycle last year and although she was in no pain at the time, her condition developed until she could not walk or move her left hip. Doctors at Mae Sot Hospital x-rayed her hip and told her she would have to go to Chiang Mai for a hip replacement operation.

BCMF took on her case and arranged for her hip replacement operation and she spent 20 days in hospital and a further 2 months in a patient house recovering before moving back to the patient house at Mae Tao Clinic. Recently, on May 13th she traveled back to Chiang Mai for a follow up consultation.

She is still in pain, but X-rays in Chiang Mai showed that everything was normal. She was given pain medication and told to come back on the 13th June for a checkup and to give time for the hip to settle. Moe Moe has been in great pain for the past year. It is possible that she has got so used to pain that she still feels it, even though there is now nothing wrong.

Moe Moe told me that the pain is getting better. She can now sleep and move around on crutches. She told me she can now bath and wash her clothes and move from her mat to eat.

Her mother returned to Burma recently to work and look after her other children. Moe Moe has not seen the rest of her family since January. She is looking forward to going back to her village and hopes that by her next appointment in Chiang Mai, the pain will be reduced.

Moe Moe told me that she was very happy. She doesn’t know what she will do in the future. It depends how well her hip heals. She doubts that she will be able to do heavy or strenuous work. She wants to work rather than go back into education. She is afraid that she will not find a husband because of her disability and wants to be able to work to support herself.

She wanted to say “thank you very much” to the person or organisation that donated the money for her treatment. She smiled and wished them a long and healthy life and told us she would pray for them every day.

Pre-treatment

Moe Moe is 20 years old, and comes from a village called Kya Ton in Karen State, Burma. She is the oldest of 8 children in her family, the youngest of which is 8 years old. Her father makes a living farming Betel nut trees but the family is quite often hungry. Betel nut is a luxury, and they have seven mouths to feed.
 
A year ago, Moe Moe skidded off her bicycle. To start with she had no pain at all, but after a month she started experiencing pain in her left hip and developed difficulty walking, which has been getting worse ever since.
 
To begin with it did not seem too serious. She says she has not seen a doctor. Doctors are few and far between in Burma generally and even more so in the part of the country where she lives, they also cost a lot of money. She got massage treatment from a local healer, but it didn’t help and after 2 months she was in great pain and found it very difficult to walk at all.

Moe Moe and her mother made the two day journey by truck to Mae Tao Clinic, by which time all the movements of her left hip were restricted and very painful. The left leg was also about an inch shorter than right. The X-Ray showed that the head of the femur was flattened, there was roughening of the socket of the joint, as well as shortening of the neck of the femur and the bone lacked its normal density.

It looked as though she had had a condition called ‘Ischemic Necrosis of the Head of the Femur’; a very unfortunate result of her fall from her bicycle.
So long after the original injury, it is unlikely that anything effective can be done without putting in a new prosthetic hip (100,000.00 Baht). This is likely to be the only way that Moe Moe will ever be able to walk comfortably again.

This procedure cannot be carried out at Mae Tao Clinic or local Mae Sot Hospital, due to lack of facilities and qualified personnel. To have this procedure, Moe Moe would need to go to Chiang Mai University Hospital. The cost for Moe Moe’s operation is beyond her family’s financial capabilities; however, if she does not get treatment, Moe Moe is going to live a painful and limited life. It is unlikely that she would be able to work to help her family or get married.

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