Dr. Alfredo Quiñones Hinojosa

He would allow me to go and explore, and I could do no wrong in his eyes.

And my grandmother, she was the opposite.

She was the one who was also, by the way, a town healer and a midwife.

And I saw the amount of respect that people had for her, the love that people had for her.

But she had also a very strong personality and she was a disciplinary towards me.

And nowadays, then, if you look at me, if you look at my picture and you look at a picture of my grandmother, imagine that you see me.

The more I age, the more I look like my grandmother physically, spiritually, and also in my personality.

farm worker.

In 1987, I fixed a 351 V6 Chevrolet engine and so on and so forth.

And I was working in the fields, picking cotton, tomato, driving all these machines.

And suddenly here I am years later after Harvard and after my residency and being at Hopkins, not here at Mayo and

where, you know, I have to be careful with what I do.

And that came clear to me when I finished Harvard and I went back to California, to the University of California, San Francisco, and I had my pickup truck.

It was a 1987, you know, Nissan pickup truck and the alternator,

needed to be exchanged.

And I proceeded to bring my tools out and exchange it.

And it was a little bit rusty and I was struggling.

And suddenly one of the ranges slipped and I ended up cutting my hand.

And it was for the first time, and I was already a resident in neurosurgery.

It was for the first time that I realized that what I did had consequences, but not just on myself.