When teaching assistant Kavita Biswas first asked for a wheelchair at the airport, she was having trouble walking even short distances.

It was a world away from her active life of practicing yoga and dance while working full-time at a school in Hong Kong.

Suddenly, in her mid-40s, she became reliant on a cane and sometimes a walker.

Knee pain was steadily taking over her life, upending her daily routine and narrowing her sense of what was still possible.

The pain started about four years ago and was initially diagnosed as a torn meniscus. Biswas, who lives in Hong Kong’s New Territories, mistakenly thought Hong Kong would solve the problem.

“Really, I just continued with my routine and exercise until the pain became unbearable and I had trouble walking,” she says.