“I Love That There’s a Lot of History Here.”
Cielo MD’96 RES’06
Favorite Thing About Rhode Island: Being near water
Favorite Rhode Island Food: New England oysters. “They’re cold and briny,” he says.
After graduating from the Medical School, Deus Cielo MD’96 RES’06 went to Houston to complete a residency in emergency medicine. “I was initially enamored with emergency medicine. It was the chaos, and having to know a little bit about everything,” he says.
That chaos and grind—along with living so far from the ocean—started to wear on him, though. At the same time, he realized that his true passion was neuroanatomy and the brain, and that he might be better suited for neurosurgery. He came back to Brown to do a neurosurgery residency, and stayed.
Cielo, an associate professor of neurosurgery, clinician educator, found a home in this specialty for a lot of reasons, including the kinds of patients he treats, and the relationships he builds with them. “The thing about the emergency room is that initially I thought I really didn’t want to follow up on patients, but I started to miss that continuation of things,” he says.
It’s different, even if it’s also “emotionally tolling.” He also found a home in Rhode Island. A San Francisco native who went to college in New York, Cielo surprised himself by falling in love with New England, something he only realized he’d done after moving to Texas. “I always thought I’d move back to California. I honestly wasn’t a big fan of winter at that point in my life,” he jokes. Plus, he likes that the past is always present.
“I love that there’s a lot of history here,” he says, particularly in the College Hill neighborhood. He and his girlfriend recently visited Salem, MA, and “it’s crazy walking around in a house that was built in the 1600s,” he says. “As I grow older, I try to appreciate those things more and the meaning of still living among history.”
