KELOWNA, B.C. (CP) — A recent backpacking trip through Africa turned into a nightmare when bacteria began destroying Trasey Plouffe‘s corneas and she lost sight in both eyes.

The 18-year-old Kelowna, B.C. resident and her Mexican friend, Maria, worked at an orphanage in Nairobi, Kenya, for 11 weeks and then began exploring the rest of the continent.

During their second day on a remote beach on the island of Zanzibar, three weeks ago, Plouffe suddenly had incredible pain in both eyes.

“It was like broken glass ripping my eyes apart. Throughout the day, the veins in my eyes started to pop out and pus started to build up and block my view,” she said in an interview from a Vancouver General Hospital bed this week.

“I couldn‘t sleep. My poor girlfriend was beside me all night giving me hot-water cloths. There was so much pus and discharge that if I went to sleep for a half-hour, I couldn‘t open my eyes. I was completely out of it.”

Plouffe lost her eyesight the next day and by the time they flew back to Tanzania she said she was hysterical

“I couldn‘t stop crying,” she said.

After a series of examinations at several hospitals, doctors advised her to return to Canada as quickly as possible.

Since she was blind, Dennis Roussel, Canadian high commissioner in the capital of Dar es Salaam, accompanied her back to Vancouver via Amsterdam.

“Dennis was just so nice. He had to put drops in my eyes every half-hour. Plus he had to feed me, to bring me to the washroom,” Plouffe said with a laugh.

When she arrived in Vancouver, doctors determined the bacteria was pseudomonas aeruginosa, an opportunistic pathogen that can strike soft tissue, the urinary tract, gastrointestinal and respiratory system, bones and joints.

Plouffe thinks it might have come from the local water when she showered while wearing contact lenses.

When her mother, Karen, first saw Trasey at the Vancouver hospital, “her eyes were a fluorescent green, like an animal‘s eyes. They were bulging and she had all kinds of stuff coming out.”

She said when Trasey called from Africa, “I went into a complete sweat in about three seconds because she told me she had lost her eyesight, she had this bacteria in her eyes and she started crying. Oh, my gosh.”

At the eye- care clinic the next day, a surgeon said he was considering removal of Plouffe‘s right eye because “it had already rotted three -quarters away,” Karen recalled.

“At that point, I was just thinking ‘I just want to see my children one day,‘” said Trasey.

“Even though these people are telling me: ‘We have to take out your eyes,‘ I didn‘t believe them. I just had this faith; I knew that everything was going to work out in the end, and it did. I just thought: keep thinking positive.”

Although she says she‘s not religious.

“I thought my Creator wouldn‘t do this to me,” said Plouffe.

Plouffe‘s condition remained stable, and surgeons decided on corneal transplants. Two days after the first of two surgeries, her doctor was putting drops into her right eye when “I saw this figure of a man,” she recalled.

“I started to freak out. I said ‘Oh my God, I think I just saw you.‘ It was really blurry, but each day, everything started to get a little bit clearer. The worst is over now, thank God.”

Her new corneas have cataracts, which look like black spots to her, so she will have artificial lenses inserted in two to three months after her corneas have healed. She could lose her sight temporarily as the cataracts worsen.

Even though her trip almost resulted in permanent blindness, “I‘km going back,” she swears. She and Maria plan to meet in Zanzibar and continue their original itinerary.

“I didn‘t get to finish off what I wanted to do. The experience was indescribable. It was the most craziest, wildest ride I‘ve ever been on. It was addiction, and I still want to backpack around, to go to Victoria Falls, Gambia, Cape town and do some bungee jumping.”

Plouffe would also like to get a post-secondary education, but has‘t decided what area of study.

“She is just so 100 per cent positive,” said her mother. “She has no regrets at all because what she saw and experienced is more than she ever imagined. That was her dream. “

“She is fearless, and she was just so determined to do this. She saved for two years.”