Health Care News Updates

Landmark Patient Returns To Methodist

José Cervantes, a painter from Mexico City, made history 35 years ago when he became Dr. Michael DeBakey’s first pediatric patient at The Methodist Hospital.  At age five, Cervantes had a rare congenital heart condition that required surgery.

“My parents had been warned that in the remote case I survived until age five, I would require surgery in order to keep living,” recalls Cervantes, now 40 years old.

DeBakey performed the first surgery to correct a condition called Tetraology of Fallot, which causes cyanotic defects that impede the normal functioning of the heart.  After that first, successful surgery, Cervantes received additional surgeries at Methodist at the ages of 17 and 20; DeBakey and heart surgeon Dr. Gerald Lawrie performed the second surgery and Lawrie alone performed the third.

On May 30, Cervantes travelled to Methodist again to thank the doctors who performed lifesaving heart surgery on him and give the hospital one of his singular paintings.  “Pulso,” created by Cervantes on a canvas nearly six feet tall, was unveiled on the Dunn 9 nursing unit with the artist’s family and doctors in attendance. 

The artist thanked the surgeons and cardiologists, led by Dr. Miguel Quinones, medical director of the Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center, as well as The Methodist Hospital for making possible his life and his art.  “Without their help, support and humanistic embrace,” Cervantes said, “I would not be here telling this story.”

“Pulso,” an oil on canvas, was painted in 2006 and Cervantes says it is his first attempt to visually depict the condition which he says has affected him all of his life.

“At five, my playmates were paper and crayons,” Cervantes says.  “From that moment, drawing and then painting have been my consolations.”

Cervantes has been a widely known artist in Mexico and Latin America since 1989, when his work was featured in a solo exhibition, “Images,” in Mexico City.  He has been a part of a number of group exhibitions around the country, and his work is on permanent display in museums in Yucatán and Michoacán.

“Pulso” was part of a large exhibition, “De Absurdios y Otras Cosas (Of Absurdities and Other Things),” at the Oscar Roman gallery in Mexico City.  All of the paintings in this exhibition were intended to reference Cervantes’ life experiences.

“I certainly owe my inspiration to the great miracles performed at The Methodist Hospital by the surgeons and cardiologists,” Cervantes says.  “Their work has permitted me to live.”