Who is Elaine?

SUMMARY OF THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL BOOK “BLACK PEARL – HISTORY OF A PATH” 

My name is Elaine Pereira da Silva, born in 1963, in the city of São Paulo, I am black. My mother, died in 1989, was a maid. My father, a bricklayer, passed away in 2005. From the age of ten, despite the current poverty, I dreamed of being a doctor. My mother always encouraged me to study.

I’ve worked since I was 14 years old, and when I graduated high school, I realized that dreams are not a passport to medical school. I tried to conform, studying Biology and graduated in 1985. The desire to be a doctor, however, continued. One of the phrases that guide my life is this fragment of the song “Club of Esquina nº 2”, of Milton Nascimento, Lô Borges, and Márcio Borges : “Because they called men, also called dreams and dreams do not age”.

After completing the biology course, I went to teach at night and take pre-vestibular course in the morning. I did six months in 1986, and I did not enter medicine. The following year, I did a full year and, in the end, I was approved in two private colleges: Puc – SP and Puccamp. To register, only on the first, I had to sell an old car, which I had bought on a teacher’s salary. The money ran out, and 12 days later, I was forced to lock up the license plate and go back to school. After a whole new year of school, I was approved at the Santa Casa, Unesp and Unicamp, where I dreamed so much.

From then on, I stopped teaching and began to realize my dream: to go to medical school. It was then the year of grace 1989. Living free of charge at the Student Housing of Unicamp, and with a small scholarship from the SAE (Student Support Service), I was studying hard. I was in the fifth year of my course in 1993 when I was admitted to the Unicamp ICU.

There I spent four days in a coma, intubated, breathing through braces, almost dead. But it would not yet be at this moment, or at other times within these years when I would see very closely the face of death, that the earth would cover me. Why? When I was in high school, I promised God that if I could become a doctor, I would attend people like me, without money. I truly believe that it was this promise that guaranteed my life years later.

My diagnosis is neurocysticercosis, Taenia solium larval disease in the head. Throughout these years I bring in the curriculum of this disease: two comas, a brain injury that would cause me mental childishness (excessive joy), loss of recent memory for three years, excessive sleepiness that, Fortunately, they were practically reversed after months of fighting. Also count: three neurosurgeries, wheelchair, crutches, eighteen admissions, numerous visits to the Emergency Room, three years of college lost and discrimination on all possible levels, imaginable and also unimaginable. However, I usually say that “God is a father, not a stepfather and not a racist”. He wanted me, after all this, to finish a book counting 300% of victory over a brain injury and its implications in the racist, classist and sexist society.

What are the sales for this fight? 

1. Since 1997 I have my medical degree, earned with blood, sweat and tears in one of the most prestigious universities of this country – a Unicamp.
2. I have my registration in CRM (Regional Council of Medicine). 
3. I have my sanity certified in medical report by the then Head of Neuroclinic of Unicamp – the same teacher who saw me with emotional uncontrollability in 1993.
4. Since graduating, I fulfill my promise: I do volunteer medical work in the community poor of Vila Brandina, in Campinas – SP. 
5. I worked as a General Clinic, effective, in the Municipality of Campinas Prefecture for five years. Approved on medical examination, without hiding my disease. For this job, competed 160 doctors. Only 65 were approved. I am the 30th place. 
6. In 1998 I did my sixth MRI of the brain and finally it came to my attention that my cysticercus is dying and this health problem is in the process of being resolved.
7. It brought, for years, much sorrow in my chest, due to the millions of assaults suffered in society by being black, poor, sick and wanting to be a doctor. When I won technically the biggest fight of my life, outwardly, God came and took away much of the hurt though, so that victory would also be in the main place – within the person. This was essential, because what got me back on my feet was not the discontent of the 500, it was the LOVE of the half dozen, mainly of the greatest friends of my life: Dr. Fabricio, student of my first class, who has not left me, like most people, in the worst time of my life and Professor Dr. Jamiro, who is a father to me, and has been attending the same slum as me for over 30 years. 
8. And, to finish with a gold key, most of my patients – both from the slum and the health center – liked very much my service, and verbalized it, to make me happier.

This true fairy tale is published in my autobiographical book titled “Black Pearl – History of Path”.

The ear of the book was written by the writer Rubem Alves.

The book ends here. 

Let’s now, briefly, update this story.

I worked in the public health network of the country for seven years and was discriminated against all this time, due to my life history and my way of acting, slow and judicious, seeking to avoid mistakes.

I was an effective doctor at Campinas Prefecture for five years. I suffered and won two unfair dismissal processes and even criminals. Exhausted, I left the Campinas. I worked in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul for three months and then I got another job in the south of the state of São Paulo, in Taquarituba, where I made very good money. However, I remained black and honest, which complicates the life of a doctor in the public health service of this country. I was there for eleven months when I lost my job to a monstrosity in March of 2005.

Tired of war, I returned to Campinas, to the proximity of my friends. I was away by the social Security for 2,5 years. I returned to volunteer medical work in the community poor of V. Brandina. I launched the book in April 2006 and since then I have given motivational lectures to the general public. This story was disseminated in the media spoken, written and televised - regional, national and international. In January 2008 I was admitted as a family doctor to the public health network of Monte Mor - SP, where I had already spoken. I worked there for almost three months, and I lost my job because I couldn’t bear the weight of attending with technical quality the large volume of patients. I asked for another doctor to help me, and I was discharged weeks later... 

I was invited by the PMDB to be a candidate for councilor, Campinas, but I did not have time nor money to campaign - the result was a fiasco... I was in private medicine, as a medical examiner in occupational medicine, from 2008 until 2010 when, due to worsening health (psychosomatic problems sequels of this history), I had to stop working. 

In 2013, an important filmmaker of international renown embraced our project. The filmmaker Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda, with professional forays in Europe, Africa and North America (see Google) very much liked our project, and would direct the documentary “Pearl Black”by the journalist Carla Lopes. We were approved by Rouanet Law, in 2014, but we could not get sponsorship in a timely manner,and the project expired...

I remain available to speak wherever I can. I attended the post-graduate classes in Medical Expertise in 2013. I passed a competition to be a General Clinical Doctor in the city of Paulínia – SP and I took this position in January 2014, which is making me very happy! Since 2015, I worked in the geriatrics of the city of Paulínia, currently in palliative care.

In 2019, I was one of eighty women called by the German Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs to found a women's network, the United Network. It is an organization to deal with topics related to women's issues in the world. The network is composed of women from Latin America, the Caribbean and Germany. The first meeting was in Salvador - BA, and was attended by Heiko Maas, German Minister of Foreign Affairs. In the flight to Salvador I met Mr. Douglas Prehl, one of the directors of Banco Santander Brasil. Upon knowing my story, he recommended me to publish the book in the United States, considering that this would open the doors for a film based on the story. He also provided the English version of the book, which is being reviewed by Brazilian journalist Marina Clélia Duarte Viana, who lives in Germany since 2006. Soon, we plan to launch the e-book “Black Pearl – History of a Path” on several platforms (Amazon and others) in the USA, and we are already in contact with Mr. Dominick Domasky, from the North American company “Motivation Champs”, who will initially publish the digital book.

Elaine P. Silva