Returning from my fifth surgical mission to Guatemala and why it matters.
Performed
Built
Medical Mission · Faith in Practice · Guatemala
Our volunteers landed on Saturday afternoon. By Sunday, more than 75 patients were already waiting; screened throughout the year by volunteer teams traveling to remote villages, then directed to us when orthopedic surgery was their only path forward.
This was my fifth year leading a surgical team for Faith in Practice, and the 50 volunteers who traveled with me came ready to work. In the days that followed, we performed 77 surgeries and assembled more than 150 wheelchairs for patients who had no other means to obtain one. Numbers matter, but they cannot fully convey what they represent.
A three year wait for a new hip
One of our patients had broken her hip three years ago. Three years. In the United States, a hip fracture triggers an urgent surgical response because delays of even a few days are associated with significantly worse outcomes. In Guatemala, the fracture simply went untreated. For three years she hobbled on a walker, unable to work, unable to fully care for her family, enduring pain that had become a fixture of her life.
We performed her hip replacement, and within days she was walking again. Free from pain. Three years of immobility, resolved in a single day. I have done thousands of hip replacements in my career but only in Guatemala does the result matter so much and provide such healing to a community.
When a biopsy result is withheld
Another patient came to us with a growing mass around her knee joint. She had sought care at a medical facility in Guatemala and was charged for a biopsy. When she could not complete the payment, her results were withheld. For over a year, she did not know whether the tumor was cancer or benign. She lived with that uncertainty, compounding every day, alongside the physical reality of a joint she could barely use.
We performed our own biopsy and sent the tissue to our pathologists through Faith in Practice. When results come back, she will be scheduled with the next orthopedic team for either amputation or reconstruction, depending on what we find. This is the extraordinary power of what Faith in Practice has built: real continuity of care, with in country staff and frequent rotating surgical teams that make staged, complex treatment possible. Most mission organizations cannot offer this. Faith in Practice has made it their foundation and why their work is so important and meaningful.
Wheelchairs change everything
I want to say something about the wheelchairs, because they tend to be overshadowed by the surgeries in how we talk about this work. They should not be. Guatemala has some of the highest rates of poverty and food insecurity in the world. Mobility is not an abstraction. Moving with ease determines whether a parent can work, whether a child can attend school, whether a family can function. Some mothers literally carry their adult children on their backs just so they can leave the house.
The 150 wheelchairs we built last week will change how those families move through the world for years to come.
What this reminds me about home
Every year I return from Guatemala with the same feeling: profound gratitude for the system I practice within, and a sharper eye for what it actually protects. Our pediatric hip screenings, our emergency treatment regulations, our public programs for the elderly, the disabled, the uninsured are not just bureaucratic click bait. They are the difference between a broken hip that gets fixed in 48 hours and one that goes untreated for three years. They are the reason our streets do not look like Guatemala’s, where disability and preventable immobility accumulate silently in communities that have no safety net to catch them.
I am not naive about the imperfections in American healthcare. But a week in Guatemala resets my perspective on what we have built and how much it matters that we protect and strengthen it.
As I walk back into my clinic and resume the routine of normal practice, I carry this with me. I will operate with renewed purpose. I will remember the woman who waited three years for a hip she deserved immediately. And I will be deeply grateful next year when I will have the opportunity to return to another team of extraordinary volunteers, and to another group of patients who are counting on us to show up.
Faith in Practice operates year round in Guatemala, providing surgical care, follow up, and community health support to patients who have no other access to treatment. If you would like to learn more or get involved, visit faithinpractice.org.