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Valeria Gomez Prof. Eric Kroll COMM 205 October 25th, 2018

A Venezuelan Doctor’s journey In a kitchen full of Latin culture and the most welcoming smells, Dr. David Sumoza shared his very own story. Born and raised in Valencia, Venezuela his life turn out to be very different than his thought. As a young medical student, he dreamt about building a career as a hematologist. Throughout the years, Sumoza developed a successful career in Venezuela becoming a recognized doctor whose patients won battles against several blood diseases, such as Leukemia. No good story comes out easy, and the rough patches in the path to success were endless. After finishing med-school in the University of Carabobo back in Venezuela, Sumoza decided to go abroad and do his fellowship at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Dr. Sumoza claimed that despite how happy and thankful he was with the United States, he wanted to go back to Venezuela and serve his country and his people. For more than 15 years, he worked day and night to save the lives of hundreds of Venezuelans. As the years want by, Venezuela’s political and economic situation kept worsening. “I had the knowledge and the ability to perform extraordinarily and help my patients, but the lack of material, the lack of products to work with made me worthless. I ended up losing patients that

I knew I could’ve saved,” said Sumoza, while he kept talking about how corruption and the government have been taking away lives for more than 18 years. Sumoza implied that back in 2012 it was not only the lack of medicine in Venezuela but also the lack of people willing to work. From nurses to secretaries, and even other doctors were just unsatisfied with their jobs. The salaries were not doing any good for them, and money was becoming less valuable every day, it was just not enough to sustain their families. Life started growing more unfair as the days passed by. “The crisis was definitely what drove me to leave the country, as much as it hurt my heart, not being able to help was slowly taking me down. So, I told Mava that there was a great opportunity to go back to Chicago at John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital. We had bought this house long ago as an investment. It was meant to be” David added It was not easy to leave our homeland and our family, but we knew it was the right call. It is hard to think about what our country is going through said Mava Sumoza, David’s wife. She kept talking about how their family of 4 left Venezuela in 2013 and ever since, David has been blessed with a stable job that lets him save lives every day. “I believe that one thing that keeps us going is the fact that even though we are far from home, our house here is constantly open to Venezuelans that come to get treatment here,” said Mava. She explained how lots of Venezuelans end up trying to get health care in the US by using their lifelong savings. As the couple kept sharing their thoughts upon our home country, it became clear that this duo is one powerful example of Venezuelan immigrants.

Dr. Sumoza continued to work on his field of expertise here while helping lots of people despite being far from his homeland he maintained his love for Venezuela....