CAMAGÜEY.- Only a few years ago we met the Doctor of Medical Sciences Miguel Emilio García Rodríguez, that one that also holds a Master's degree in Medical Urgencies, Teacher and Titular Investigator, and specialist of 2nd. Grade in General Surgery and in Administration and Organization of Health. With these professional achievements, and his appearance that impresses, he achieved to direct the Manuel Ascunce Domenech university hospital, of this city. We did not know how to accurately judge him, only the time and the profession let us to know on his life, which we never imagine at first sight.
- I was born on April 28, 1964 in the ancient Spanish Cologne of this city, today pediatric hospital Eduardo Agramonte Piña, and at 48 hours they moved me to Nuevitas, from which my parents were native, especially on the part of my dad, because my maternal grandfather came from Spain in the epoch of the Spanish Civil war.
-This way our dialogue began and he added:
- On my paternal side, the tradition was to be a fisherman and employee of the port, and for the maternal side my grandfather, was employee of a shop and with a lot of work and effort it managed to have its own business and ground, it was very assiduous.
“I had a very normal infancy in Nuevitas, in this place I have spent my best and worst times. My father was very dear and as I always heard very well practically in the port, he even was the manager of the whole movement of the ships at the entry and exit for Angola, in times of the war.
“About my worst moments, I refer that in 1976 my mother died due to a sub-arachnoid hemorrhage, apparently for an intra-cerebral vascular malformation, of this epoch that I was still a child, remember the Teacher Oliverio Agramonte Burón, great surgeon still active and that was very special in that related to my mom. Her death marked me forever, she decided to stay living in Cuba, but all her family went to the United States. After she was missing my father assumed the double role, but I confess that I needed my mother every minute of my life. She and her family were very catholic and like that she raised us, my sister and me, after she died I never went to the church again, I was only 12 years old and I did not understand that if I was so good how it was possible they will take her away of me this way. All that caused disturbances in my life.
-Where did you study your studies and how did you come to the Medicine?
- The elementary and high school, I studied in Nuevitas, the pre-university I did it in Sierra de Cubitas. My inclination was to be a Naval Engineer, it seems that for the influence of the environment; nevertheless, the desire of my dad was not this, he wanted me to be a doctor. In my youth I was one more, I behave as the average of this epoch and continued with my determination of these studies, so it was necessary to leave of the country, in the socialistic countries of that time. It is obvious to say that my father denied it completely, and the Medicine was not displeasing me, but I did not have it in my plans; nevertheless, for pleasing him I changed the degree, I was of the average, nothing outstanding. He was an admirer of the doctors and he was friend of several, among them Dr. Bárbaro Armas Pérez, surgeon of the hospital Amalia Simoni and for whom I have a new paragraph, he worked there.
“It was not enough to my dad to ask me to be a doctor, but just as I should become a surgeon and I confess that I was very dependent on him and on his orders, as to say. In the first year of the degree I entered for the first time an operations lounge with Dr. Ramón Romero Sánchez, with whom familiar bonds join me, also, and the truth did not displease me.
“In the first two years of the degree, I was a leader of the University Student Federation (FEU), already in the third year I went on to the surgical clinical hospital Amalia Simoni, and there I started in the surgery of a stable way with Dr. Bárbaro Armas, with that one of who I have memories since I was a child. With him very special bonds join me, next to him I spent the third, the fourth and fifth years and the sixth one in Nuevitas. When I had the opportunity to be already next to Bárbaro, I identified with the surgery and very well with the Medicine career, I was already different.
“For diverse causes when I had to choose the specialty I could not, they located me in the municipality of Sierra de Cubitas to do the postgraduate because I preferred not to devote myself to other one. There I was for three years, practiced in the general hospital in the consultation of internal medicine. In this territory, I became a doctor for the whole life, it was a unique experience, we did everything, we collide with a tremendous reality. I obtained several recognition as National Avant-garde, and on November 5, 1990 I began the residence in general surgery, there was a place, many wanted it, they selected me to do it in "Amalia Simoni", hospital with which I stayed much linked and with Dr. Bárbaro, my paradigm in the surgery, and my not blood father, but yes professionally and in all the aspects of my life.
“This is a hospital that I love, it was my school, my quite, my medical education and of the specialty I owe it to this center. From there I admire all my teachers, someone of them already deceased, and to all my coworkers, and refer to all, doctors and not doctors. I did the specialty in three years and three months because due to my performance I could pass the first and third year. I graduated of surgeon on April 8, 1994 and following May 2 began in Nuevitas, where I stayed for 17 years; there I was a chief of service of general surgery, a surgical deputy director, the director of the Branch attending to the Medical care. It was another school for me although already as specialist, place in which I surrendered in body and soul, and in this epoch I became a specialist of 2nd Grade, I obtained the Teacher's category, I became a Doctor of Medical sciences, obtained the Forgers of the Future´ Stamp and Award to Personality of the Juvenile Technical Brigades (BTJ), also I fulfilled internationalist mission in the people's Republic of Ghana, where I was a regional chief of the area Koforidua, in a hospital that overcomes 500 beds, and in little more than two years I operated on more than 2 000 patients, there they made me a Foster child as recognition also to the community work.
“In the mission I was a National Avant-garde and also in Nuevitas for two years, they stimulated me with the Award of the Minister of the Health, which was awarded me for an only time at the end of the decade of ‘90, and the Doctoral Thesis was selected as a national project”.
-How do you arrive to Camagüey?
- At the end of 2010, the Rector of that time of the University of Medical Sciences Carlos J. Finlay, the Dr. Maria del Carmen Romero Sánchez, wanted that I assumed the deanery of the degree of Medicine, this was a major challenge, I thought it very much because I believed I would move away from the surgery, and I always had the idea if I returned to Camagüey to go to "Amalia Simoni". Finally I came in May, 2011 as Dean of the faculty of Medicine and immediately I linked to this hospital, to "Manuel Ascunce", to continue the assistance, already with the profile of thorax that I brought from Nuevitas.
“Since I returned to Camagüey I was set on trying to unify the thorax surgery, taking it to different surgeons and this way to support the legacy of my teachers. After three years as Dean I began to work as Academic Vice-rector of the University until 2015, which they proposed to me to direct this hospital, something that I did not have in my plans either, since I thought to continue as surgeon on having stopped from the Medical University. The decision was collegiate with my family and here I am.
“This is an arduous and difficult task, it is one of five biggest hospitals of Cuba, it has 38 health services and 24 medical services and it was where the teaching was founded in the province, and this managerial life that I had earlier has served me, of course, I have never stopped doing assistance and 75 % of the surgery that I do is thoracic.
-Apart from your teachers are there persons who have helped you to grow like professional?
- It would not have been possible without the familiar support, my wife, my partner for 30 years has endorsed me at all times, and my son, who is already a doctor and does stay in general surgery with aspirations to come to the cardiovascular one, he is my pride, he was the best graduated student, it is very studious. I am provided with a short, but wonderful family, and have a sister that we have loved very much, although she decided to emigrate.
“My father died at the age of 90, he never wanted to go away of Nuevitas, he enjoyed to sit down in the portal of his house in the Maceo street and to smell the saltpeter, that he did not change it for anything. My father was very straight, he raised us the old way.
Photo:Olga Lilia Vilató de Varona /Adelante
-To him are we thank for the doctor and the surgeon you are?
- Mostly, and today I am grateful for it, I do not think that I have had a high intelligence coefficient, but I have persevered and I propose myself achievable goals. I feel satisfied with what I reached, although I confess that simultaneously I am nonconformist until after successful surgeries. My determination not to leave the country has been mine and my Cuban identity feeling I also owe it to my father, I feel pride of my nation, I like my Cuba.
-What do you feel when you know that one of your foreign pupils makes sure that you have the God's hands?
- The definition that I have of God is to do good things. I make an effort and suffer with every patient, I like identifying me with them and that is good and bad. When everything goes right the happiness it is infinite, but I am a human being and I treat human beings, and if the things do not end in a satisfactory way, I suffer it very much.
“What it is sure is that when I put my hands on a patient I try to do it with love, independently of the origin, beliefs, ideology, or sex, nothing of that is important to me, the human being is what I am interested in and for that one I fight, and if God exists, if it gave me the gift of interacting with the Medicine and of preparing myself to do the right, then of course I must be grateful for it and there everybody who has formed me counts on that. God's hands is a gift that must have every doctor”.
-Whom have you venerated then?
- My family and my teachers. The respect that I feel towards my teachers is higher, to some that I have seen coming at the end of his lives I have suffered it as if they were my father. Ramón Romero has been my guide in the scientific part, with a vision of very important future. I have been very lucky because Bárbaro Armas is another scientist who brings together his brain with his hands like surgeon and to write, something he does very well.
“I must mention the Teacher Amaranto Borges, already deceased, and example in this type of surgeries, that is, thoracic, for many specialists, he was an eminence, along with Bárbaro Armas, and I am sure that between them two forged my hands, along with others impossible of mentioning, and they were like the Riders of the Apocalypse of this epoch in the surgery of this hospital, even, when I worked at Nuevitas I took the doctors Borges and Bárbaro often so that they supported me in some cases.
-To the return of the years, if you had to choose between so much responsibilities?
- I would do everything again. First doctor, surgeon, and to be the director has formed me as a better person, the life has given me the possibility of linking everything. I see myself as a helmsman of a ship, that one whom I resigned to be a doctor, and the results of this are of the group.
“When the students speak well about the education, when the bulging professionals from here have achievements learned between these walls, it does that one feels a healthy pride. Despite the blockade that the United States imposes on us, which it is real, and to be sure that we have many external problems, there are other internal limitations than sometimes we cannot know how to face them, and that is demonstrated. In this center, we have the historical number of about 26 000 annual surgical interventions, and this year, with very much less resources that the previous one that we do not fulfill the plan, we already exceed this number.
“One of my missions here is to make people understand that we live in this hospital, because it is like that, we live, that this is to offer health, not to work for working, and each of us must administer what we have to our scope to give to the persons what they really need”.
-Did 2019 bring to you special stimuli, can you mention them?
- In the provincial version of 44th Contest Annual Award of the Health, I obtained the Great Award in the Applied Researches category: Program of integral attention for patients with lung cancer, while in 14th International Congress of Surgery Emilio Camayd Zogbe they granted the Award, the first time to a Camagüey´s doctor, for the scientific and social impact of the investigation: Program of integral attention for patients with pulmonary cancer, presented in the category of free topic, but look, in all the cases it is a recognition to a group of persons who do not rest in offering the most valued thing that a human being can have, which is the health. It is the task of a team of professionals that advances with intelligence and that I lead for some years, but it is not only me, it is a pride of many.
- To answer something from the beginning, we confess that this man of high height, of strong appearance and sure gait, appears before us long ago as noble person, an incredible, simple human being committed in body and soul to his profession. He is someone whom we all finish calling him Miguelito or Migue, just as that, because when we know him, he entrusts himself that we see him like a friend, and if we have the fortune of seeing his performance in an operating theater, then we really believe that we are in presence not only of the God hands, but also of his heart.
Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez