EDITORIAL

Matters of life for a mature orthopedist

Gilberto Camanho

We orthopedists who have passed the likely midpoint of our lives have dedicated a considerable amount of time to our specialty. As professionals, as students, as teachers, as writers, as readers, as members of professional organizations, as panelists at congresses, as exhibitors at congresses, as trainees, as travelers to training programs: some more so and others less so, but certainly we have dedicated more than half of our lives to matters relating to orthopedics.

All these activities give rise to happiness, sadness, pleasure, displeasure, friends, enemies and many other things that are the same or opposites. I am among those who have been highly dedicated to our specialty, and so I have an enormous baggage acquired over these years of orthopedics.

Friends always leave their mark: some orthopedist friends with whom I have had a sporadic, essentially professional relationship; and others who have gone beyond this barrier and have been transformed into lifelong friends. Fortunately, I have made many more orthopedist friends than enemies, and I have made great friends for life, coming from my professional, academic or society activities.

Recently, I lost one friend who I held in great esteem: his professional and scientific honesty impressed me; his clarity of ideas was a source of fascination; and his professional capacity was always respected by everyone.

I do not know what day he was born on, or when he graduated or did his master's degree and doctorate, or when he became a professor. This text is not an obituary: I am sure that someone else will write a perfect one with all the dates. It is, however, a grieving farewell and remembrance for a friend.

He was an academic politician who always knew how to value physicians, researchers and writers, and was a very important adviser at the start of my administration at the RBO

He was a friend during my academic career who, when I was going through the most difficult time of my academic life, advised and encouraged me. At that time, I sometimes thought of giving up, but he always encouraged me to continue in the career, a stimulus that came with advice and invitations to participate in a variety of scientific activities, to motivate me to remain in the academic community. He was a professor by vocation, and dedicated himself full time to teaching and research, always believing in this task.

He was a comrade in the medical association, who demonstrated to me that living together with the surgical materials industry was necessary and could be healthy. He was an important member of AO; he knew, like no one else, how to place value on and dignify relationships with continuing medical education and ethical sponsorship.

He was a skillful surgeon, always ready to improve and innovate. He was responsible for innumerable operative tactics that would simplify and facilitate trauma and knee surgery, the fields of greatest interest to him.

He was a golf partner who, from the time he began playing, albeit like me, a late starter, he distinguished himself as a technical player who made great progress. I was able to enjoy his company for many agreeable hours on the different fairways of the golf courses where we played; listening to him expound his philosophies, or when he tried to convince me that everything that was good in Brazilian orthopedics had started in the Ribeirão Preto Medical School. He was passionate about his origins; he considered that he made the most of the best things in the world, from the golf course to the food at the Pirâmide, in his city.

Dear friend: I will remember you in the classroom, in the surgical center, in thesis supervision, on the examiners' bench, in the editorial office of the RBO, on the golf course and on all the occasions when I have to decide on something; losing you was a matter of life for a mature orthopedist.

Rest in peace, my dear friend Pacolla.

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