A gift that brings tears
A Honduran man’s incredible journey to thank a surgeon from Milwaukee.
Sometimes the weight of what we give, even when what we give is extraordinary and rare, can be measured in terms that are profoundly simple and straightforward.
Over the summer, Chris Evanich did something extraordinary and rare. The value of his gift, measured by its recipient, weighed one pound.
Chris is an orthopedic surgeon at Wauwatosa Surgery Center in Milwaukee. The center is part of Surgical Care Affiliates, which has a couple hundred similar facilities scattered across the county.
Chris’ brother, David Evanich, is also an orthopedic surgeon. David works at a Surgical Care Affiliates center in Dallas.
In June, Chris, David, another orthopedic surgeon from Dallas, and a team of 50 anesthesiologists, nurses and technicians traveled to Honduras, to a 200-acre ranch for orphaned and abandoned children.
It’s called Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos — Our Little Brothers and Sisters — and it is located about an hour northeast of Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras.
A small surgical center — three operating rooms, a clinic and a handful of beds — has been established on the ranch. It is operated by One World Surgery, a nonprofit that provides free services in developing countries.
Chris’ specialty is hip replacements. His brother’s specialty is knees. Such procedures are prohibitively expensive for most Hondurans. The surgical center has a waiting list of more than 1,500 people.
The American surgical team, with only a week to operate, took on the worst of the worst.
“These were the severest of the deformities,” Chris said. “Probably 20% of the cases were people that had fractured hips years ago.”
One such man was Usando Cantillano.
A decade ago, when he was a teenager, Usando had been in a farming accident.
“It destroyed his hip joint,” Chris said.
Chris pulled out an x-ray of Usando’s hip. It showed the ball at the top of Usando’s right thigh bone neatly seated in its pelvis socket.
The left side was a shattered mess, with the top his thigh bone fused to his pelvis, inches too high.
“He’d been walking on that for years and years and years,” Chris said. He grimaced.
Chris installed a prosthetic ball at the top of Usando’s thigh and prosthetic socket in his pelvis. Done and done.
Usando spent the night at the center and then, using a walker to stand squarely on two feet for the first time in his adult life, Usando boarded a bus for the two-hour ride home over rutted and bumpy roads.
After his first surgery the next day, Chris went to a lounge for a break. There he found a one-pound bag of coffee with a note. A staff member translated it for him:
“Dear Dr. Evanich,” it said.
“Thank you for making us feel safe in your hands. God bless you.”
Chris’ eyes grew wet. And his voice cracked. “He took the 5 a.m. bus back to the surgery center just to drop this off,” he said.
“He spent four hours on the bus to deliver this. A pound of coffee.”