Recently, when I returned to Brazil in 2020, I experienced another sign that I should go back to the United States. My mentor, Dr. José Luiz Pozo Raymundo, passed away due to Covid-19. He was a professor at my university and an orthopedic surgeon for a prominent club in the Brazilian National Soccer League. I shadowed him daily at the university, his clinic, and during surgeries at the hospital. He allowed me to perform physical exams, assist in surgeries for both ordinary patients and soccer players, and even enter the operating room.
I learned more from him than anyone else, even during our shared lunches between surgeries and the rides he would give me from the hospital to my residence. In our conversations, he often encouraged me to seek opportunities in the United States. He was a graduate of one of the country’s top programs and well-known nationally, and he frequently attended conferences in the USA.
Since my return to Brazil, due to the quarantine, our in-person medical school classes have remained suspended. We have only had virtual classes. As I had been an in-person anatomy tutor for the past three years, I transitioned to teaching it online, writing articles, and producing videos. This motivated me to learn more and provided me with the opportunity to conduct research, which I had begun but had to interrupt due to my mentor’s passing. Then, by chance, a neurosurgeon from the most prestigious educational institution in the country – USP – Dr. Adilson Oliveira, came across the classes I offered on social media and invited me to collaborate on research with him. He is an expert in peripheral nerve surgery. Now we are working together on a bibliometric analysis of traumatic brachial plexus injuries and a systematic review of nerve injuries in arthroscopy.