Ecuadorean Woman Finds New Arms--and New Hope--in America

In her poor village in Ecuador, Hilda Galarza had been unable to find work for years. A huge debt hung over her family, and she could do nothing to help.

When she was 5, her arms were crushed by a grinding machine at a sugar cane factory where she was helping her father work.

Feeling like a burden to her parents as a grown woman without a job, Galarza considered joining a convent. Instead, she headed for New Haven, where a friend lived. Maybe in America she could find work and money to send home.

At least at first, the move didn’t improve her prospects. Knowing only a few words of English, she failed to turn up any job opportunities in rounds of telephone calls. The despair returned.

“I cried every day and night,” Galarza said through an interpreter. “I just wanted to go home.”

Galarza, 33, never did get a job. But with help from members of a church, a prosthetics company and the goodwill of others who heard about her plight, she is going home with something even more valuable.

A pair of arms.

“I came here to find a job and I didn’t get one,” she said. “I wanted to go home with money, but I’m going home with more than I bargained for. They gave me back my life.”

Galarza is the eldest of five children reared in the small village of Wambi, a 10-hour drive from the capital of Quito. She doesn’t remember much about that day she lost her arms to the sugar cane mill, but she has been told the story enough times to know the details.

“It gets to me, but I can talk about it,” she says through tears.

After the accident, she was flown to a hospital in Quito, where doctors amputated both arms above the elbows. She remained hospitalized for two years. An infection forced her to get another amputation higher up on her limbs.

Her father kept her out of school at first, afraid the other kids would make fun of his daughter. Eventually, a teacher persuaded him that she belonged in class.

Galarza excelled. Holding her pen with the ends of both residual limbs, she gained honors straight through to high school graduation.

“It wasn’t difficult,” Galarza says, smiling as she demonstrates how she writes things down.

She has had several different sets of artificial arms. Her first, when she was 11, were a gift from an Italian priest. A new pair, when she was 17, came from an Australian missionary.

“Throughout my life, God has been good to me,” she says. “He just forgot about me for a little while, when I had my accident.”

Galarza’s most recent pair of arms were antiquated and cumbersome. When she arrived, the cables and harnesses were tattered, and some were not functioning.

Still, she had the dexterity to knit with her residual limbs and use artificial arms with aluminum hooks to do such things as cook, clean and iron.

At first she was able to work in Ecuador. She held down a job in an office, relying on the hooks on her arms to do clerical work. Then, she says, she became sick and lost her job in the late 1980s.

After recovering, she was unable to find a new job, leaving her filled with shame. She did not want to let down her parents or make them spend their old age worrying about her future.

“I want them to know I will be able to take care of myself,” she says, abandoning her cheery disposition as she talks about her fears.

It was a visit to a Spanish church in her New Haven neighborhood that turned things around for Galarza.

Church member Flor Ossa said her husband knew a doctor who had attended the church. The doctor contacted NovaCare, a prosthetics company based in King of Prussia, Pa., that has a clinic in Hamden, near New Haven. NovaCare and Fillauer Orthopedic Co., of Chattanooga, Tenn., together provided the arms, cables and attachments.

Galarza’s new arms are lighter than the ones she has been using, and come with both hooks and a pair of hands. So that they can be serviced back home, they are not the most sophisticated on the market.

But they will let her do simple things she could not do before, such as buttoning her own blouse. And she says they should make it easier for her to find work back home.

“I would say that Hilda’s general outlook is much more positive than a lot of other patients,” says John Zenie, the certified prosthetist who is fabricating and fitting her arms at the NovaCare clinic in Hamden.

“She really displays a great sense that the future is going to be bright and she is willing to overcome any obstacle,” he says.

Galarza recently was fitted for the sockets for her new arms. Standing in front of a full-length mirror, she grinned and stared wide-eyed as Zenie and an interpreter discussed adjustments.

She got her new prostheses in October and has been practicing. She filed for a medical extension of her six-month visa and plans to return home by the end of November.

Galarza says says she can’t find the words to say how thankful she is or find a way to repay all the kindness shown her.

“All you can do is offer your heart,” she says.