The letter follows:
Dear Friends,
We have a young mother who had a bad fall 6 months ago, while carrying her baby. Her instinct was to guard the baby, so she landed on her right arm and damaged her elbow badly. Ignorance and poverty led to neglect and bad advice from her family, which only served to complicate the injury. After three months, her arm was rigid and very painful, so she agreed to have surgery in the National Hospital in Sololá. Unfortunately, that surgery was unsuccessful.
Presently, she is on the verge of losing all function in her right arm. We have arranged for a very experienced surgeon, an old family friend of Carmen's, who is a hand- and upper-limb surgeon, to try to fix her elbow tomorrow morning. She will never regain full function, but the surgeon hopes for at least 50% function. Dr. Foncea, the surgeon, will not charge, and he has arranged for free anesthesia and hospital discounts. However, the family needs to cover more expenses, x-rays, some transportation, certain materials, and special sutures and screws to fix the elbow. As such, we need to find approximately Q9000. So far, we have raised the equivalent of Q6700, Q1000 of which we have contributed and spent already. We were wondering if you might be able to help with this case?
Please feel free to forward this appeal for help to any of your friends.
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Craig and Carmen
Craig A. Sinkinson, M.D.
President, Mayan Medical Aid