Walk with us in Cuenca

In a few weeks, I’ll be traveling to Cuenca, Ecuador with Operation Rainbow to do what I love most: operating on children who have nowhere else to turn.

These are kids born with hip dysplasia so severe that they have no hip socket. Kids with limb deformities they make it impossible to walk-  either differences from birth or the result of untreated trauma. Kids with cerebral palsy whose muscles have pulled their bones out of alignment, progressively, until walking — or even sitting comfortably — is no longer possible.

In the U.S., these are treatable conditions. A referral, an insurance approval, a surgery date. But for the families I’ll meet in Cuenca, that path doesn’t exist. Without our help, they would go untreated. 

These families hear of our trip, they travel hundreds of miles for our first day of clinic, and they hope.  We offer advice and nonsurgical treatment to hundreds.  And we perform life changing surgery on 50-70 children per trip.

I’ve spent my career training for exactly this work. Pediatric orthopedic surgery — hip reconstruction for DDH, deformity correction, gait surgery for children with cerebral palsy — is a narrow, specialized skill. Not many surgeons do it. That’s precisely why I go: because when I’m in that operating room in Cuenca, I’m not one of many options for that child. I might be the only one.

I don’t say that to sound heroic. I say it because it’s the honor of my professional life. There is nothing like  a parent’s face when they understand that her child’s future just changed in the space of a four-hour surgery. That moment is why I trained for over a decade, and it’s why I keep going back. 

But we can’t do it alone, and we can’t do it for free — not because we ask for anything, but because the trip itself has real costs: surgical supplies, casting materials, anesthesia medications, and equipment that the local hospital doesn’t have on hand. Every surgeon, anesthesiologist, nurse, tech, annd translator donates their time and invests in these trips. We all have to fund and fundraise our travel and supplies. Every dollar raised goes directly toward making sure that when I walk into that OR, I have the equipment and the team I need to give these kids the surgery they deserve.

My goal is to raise $4,000 in the next two weeks — enough to cover critical supplies for this trip and make sure no child is turned away because of a missing piece of equipment.

I’m asking my friends and family — the people who already know how much this work means to me — to help make it possible. You don’t have to understand orthopedic surgery to understand what it means to watch a child walk for the first time. Any amount helps, and sharing this page with others who might want to be part of it helps just as much as a donation does.

Thank you for being part of this. Thank you for helping a child somewhere in Cuenca take a step they never thought they’d take.

With gratitude,

Scott