From meningitis to medicine: How timing shaped Dr. Vasile Popa’s commitment to neuroscience (2025)

Timing is everything in strokes, and few understand that better than Dr. Vasile Popa, whose journey proves it.

Popa, a board-certified neurologist, recently joined Baptist Health-Fort Smith, but his path to medicine has been shaped by timing, fate and moments that were meant to be.

As a child in Romania, Popa was hospitalized several times with meningitis, a painful experience that would shape his future. One of his earliest memories is of an event when dignitaries came to visit his city. He was one of the five children chosen to greet them at the airport. It was cold, and the snow began to fall. Popa believes this is when he got sick. He endured numerous lumbar punctures.

“I felt so bad,” Popa recalled. “I wanted to be the guy who did this to others, not someone else’s guinea pig.” He chuckled. “I’m joking now, but this is how it started — my attraction to medicine.”

The timing of his illness led to his fascination with the human brain and a drive to understand its workings. He later reflected on his pride when he entered medical school and met a mentor who would shape his career.

Dr. Cornel Sipos was a guiding figure and became Popa’s sponsor to help him come to the United States and the godfather to his children.

“He was a remarkable guy,” Popa said, his admiration evident. “He introduced me to the transcranial Doppler, and that’s key to everything in my life.”

At the time, the transcranial Doppler — a noninvasive ultrasound method to study blood flow in the brain — was revolutionary. The technology was still in its infancy. Popa was fortunate: his small Romanian city was one of the first in the world to receive the machine.

“It was brought to America by a Norwegian guy but perfected in Switzerland. The Germans built the first machine,” Popa said. “My city was among the first to get it. Dr. Sipos encouraged me to work with it, and I even did my diploma work with it.”

The timing couldn’t have been better. Popa was not just an observer. He was one of the first to use the technology. He tested it on healthy individuals to help establish the physiological parameters of normal brain blood flow. His findings were published in a French medical journal.

Shortly thereafter, the Romanian Revolution happened, forever altering the course of his life. With the fall of Communism, Popa could apply for a position as a professor at the university. While there, he co-published his first book on transcranial Doppler with Dr. Sipos. Popa’s time in his home country grew uncertain as Romania shifted politically and economically.

Driven by the need for change, he moved to Bucharest to work on his thesis under the guidance of Dr. Leon Dănăilă, a neurosurgeon who had performed more than 30,000 surgeries by the time Popa met him. The timing again seemed perfect. Here, Popa learned from one of the best, a man whose wealth of knowledge would fuel his career.

But Popa soon encountered more challenges. Economic instability and social corruption made it difficult to stay in Romania. So, he left for Hungary, where he continued his advanced studies and met yet another influential mentor: Dr. Andrei Alexandrov, a neurologist and a “Russian Viking” who would be pivotal in bringing Popa to the United States.

The pieces began to fall into place in Hungary, but it wasn’t until years later that Popa truly began to pivot. Alexandrov, who had relocated to the U.S. and worked in New Orleans, encouraged Popa to follow. Although he already had built a fulfilling career, Popa realized that the time had come to push forward and come to the United States.

“Timing was everything,” Popa said. “I was satisfied as a neurosonologist. I was making good money, but I realized that no one took my opinion seriously despite all my experience when I wasn’t wearing a white coat.”

Alexandrov told him to get an American medical license, but it took several years before Popa was ready to move. The timing was right.

He quit his job at the medical center and took on a very different role — a cab driver. For three days each week, he drove through the streets of New Orleans, studying whenever he could.

“Most of my stories about being a cab driver in New Orleans are not decent,” Popa laughed. “Especially for a medical environment. I would drive until Sunday morning, sleep for 20 hours, and study the rest of the week until it was time to drive again. I was a good cab driver. I even got a phone call three or four years after I finished my residency. They said, ‘Hey, Doc, when you’re done, can you come drive for us?’”

Popa’s cab-driving days, spent juggling the need for sleep and the pressure to study, seemed like another form of timing. After all, those long nights on the road allowed him to pursue his medical license without giving up on his ultimate goal. His dedication paid off in 2019 when he completed his neurology residency at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center.

After completing his residency, Popa worked at hospitals in Minnesota, West Virginia and Connecticut before he arrived in Fort Smith.

He said he had to overcome cultural and language barriers before he got back into medicine, but he already had navigated far more difficult ones.

“When it came time for me to study to get my residency, I was ready,” he said. “I had American friends, some very important people, and others who were just very nice. They took me around to their society. Slowly but surely, the time became right for me to return to medicine.”

Popa’s story — his journey to becoming a physician, a mentor, and an advocate for stroke awareness — is one of precision and resilience, where timing wasn’t just a concept — it was a lifeline. Today, as he treats Baptist Health patients, Dr. Popa focuses on what he’s always known: timing is everything.