It is easy to picture Mrs. Elma Brito’s morning on any day. She is as careful and quiet as possible as she rises. She wants her little boy, Jacinto, to sleep a little longer while she prepares breakfast for him and his two sisters.
This is the type of morning most mothers could find familiar. Except, Elma lives in La Pista, a rural village in Quiché, Guatemala. She wants her boy to sleep a little longer because he cannot rest the night peacefully. He has a small lump on his face that grows and becomes more painful daily. Elma’s husband tends a small batch of crops near their home, and the family of five’s income is less than US$5.50 per day.
In their quest to help Jacinto, a local medical clinic in the nearest town requested Q8,000 (close to $1,000) to perform a surgery to remove the lump that would stop his pain. This sum seems impossible, as it might mean choosing between surgery for Jacinto or feeding the family. They were forced to wait until Miguel, a Partner for Surgery (PFS) Health Promotor, provided all the details that brought them to the PFS rural medical mission on May 17th.
Elma could barely hold her tears back while Dr. Michelle examined her boy and told her Jacinto was one of the 57 patients our medical volunteers were able to match for surgery that day.
He is scheduled for surgery with one of our medical teams this coming October.
There is joy in every rural mission when we meet people like Jacinto and his mother. However, this time, our volunteers, staff, and health promoters were incredibly excited, knowing that it had been 805 days since the last time we were in Quiché due to the pandemic. A renewed hope is knowing we could return and meet all the new friends waiting for us in Quiché.
My name is Mariajose Ortiz, but my friends call me MJ. I am Partner for Surgery’s (PFS) new Resource Development Director. While I write this, I am traveling back from my first rural medical mission in Quiché, Guatemala. Professionally, I have worked on different types of projects in medical care. Yet, during my first week on the ground with the PFS team, what I see is different in a very critical way.
Karla is a Honduran woman in her mid-40s, living in Tactic, Alta Verapaz, Guatemala. She attended a Partner for Surgery Mobile Medical Mission in June 2019 for a mass on her face and neck and was diagnosed with a Giant Right Parotid Mass. It’s been a long road for Karla and her journey continues even to this day, but Partner for Surgery Guatemala (Compañero para Cirugía, or CPC) has been with her the whole way. Read on to learn more about Karla’s patient story. 
