Marycarmen Caro Gastelum was 24 years old and coming off a long shift at Hospital Guadalajara in Tijuana.
On 2da and Negrete, right in the city center, she saw a man in a wheelchair tending to his foot with tap water, sitting on a cardboard box. Two years earlier, several of his toes had been amputated because of thrombosis. Since then, that was all the treatment he had.
Marycarmen went into a pharmacy, bought gloves and basic supplies, and knelt right there, on the sidewalk, to treat him.
The next day she returned, at the same time, to continue treating him. A man passing by came over to congratulate her and brought four more bandages.
She didn’t even realize the story had gone viral. A colleague at the hospital told her.
Sometimes the greatest medicine isn’t in an operating room, but on a sidewalk.
