“I come from a place very far from Quito”, explained Maria Guasti. Even with advanced osteoarthritis of the hip, Maria still farms in the mountains in the northeastern mountains of the country. Though she speaks Spanish, her first language is Quechua, the main indigenous language of Ecuador. She explained to us that she came from quite a distance to get here for clinic day. To make a living as a farmer, she still has to walk her cattle to their feeding fields and harvest her vegetables despite her stiffness and pain in her hip. She came to the clinic with her daughter, who acts as her caregiver and her language helper. When we presented her with the mock-prosthetics, she was quite intrigued to see how those pieces of metal would fit in her body.

Maria is not the only patient who travelled extensively to be assessed by the CAMTA team. To make it easier for them and their accompanying family members, most of those patients are scheduled early in the week. Maria's surgery happened early, on Monday. It was difficult for her daughter to leave her side when she was rolled to the operative ward, but Maria was calm and excited to meet new people along the way.