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MEMORIAL

José Carlos de Andrade (28/5/1942 - 11/6/2008)

Antonio Carlos Carvalho0

DOI: 10.1590/S0102-76382008000300005

It is hard to translate in a few paragraphs a friendship and professional contact over more than 30 years with such a passionate, active, and exciting (filled with energy) fellow as José Carlos (JC) Silva de Andrade.


Fig.1 - Dr. José Carlos de Andrade and his wife, Isabel (Bela) Bastos de Andrade



Zé Carlos ("Passarinho" - little bird, in portuguese) filled that facet of multiple skills and interests as nobody has ever done before, all these facets he experienced at high speed and energetically (strong-willed, athletic, competitive, someone who loved and enjoyed life in all its magnitude and details); at last, a person who was swimming in joy. José Carlos was extremely attached to his family, but at the same time, he was an inventive and dedicated surgeon, a professor who "designed" and "taught" interesting and dynamic classes, a permanent contester of the eternal verities, a "magician", who more than anyone else, enjoyed and was very happy with his tricks, or who loved to exhibits his pizza chief's talents, a sportsman who loved water, his motor-boat, water-skiing, and the pilot who used to fly as free as a "bird" in his own plane.

To enjoy, living and letting live, freely, at the mercy of life, to live intensely everything at every moment, this seemed to be José Carlos' epigraph. He seemed to say to a lot of people: life is a gift from God, it is the chance of a lifetime, let's not waist it peevishly, meanness, or sadness beyond the necessary time to bury in oblivion a painful occurrence, there are problems to be faced, however, we should never let the negative side spoils the positive side of keeping on living an enriched and plentiful life experience, a life full of wonderful events, which let us to share daily with nature the singing of the birds, the green of the woods, the opening of a colorful flower, the shine of the stars, and the warmth of the sun. It is a pity that many healthy people live, but are blind and cannot appreciate the tiny details that made life so precious to be lived; José Carlos knew how to appreciate it so much. This is probably one of the major reasons (to some, motive of incomprehension) by which to live relatively far away (close to Represa de Guarapiranga) from downtown, constantly going back and forth to São Paulo, was not an obstacle. The pleasure to live closer to the nature was priceless, and it worth the price of the everyday going back and forth.


Fig.2 - Dr. José Carlos de Andrade "playing his magician's tricks" during the XIX Brazilian Congress of Cardiac Arrhythmias hold in São José do Rio Preto, São Paulo, in 2002



He was frank, happy, and together with Bela outlined and made an incredible and wide network at School, at other institutions of São Paulo, in the interior of the São Paulo State, in other States, as well as abroad - from Latin America to USA, passing through Portugal, Germany, Spain, and Italy. His technical knowledge, the commanding admiration and professional respect gathered in all these places were sound witness of how he ennobled and spread his name, but above all the name of Cardiovascular Surgery and the Paulista Medical School - UNIFESP, spreading it to practically every hidden secluded place. In spite of all these aspects, he was not "desperate" to participate or to show-off in events or articles. All the invitations he received, have always translated the respect to his knowledge.

JC, together with the deceased Décio Kormann, was of utmost importance in spilling out and building up a "school", which required quality and absolute professional trust in Cardiac Stimulation. Certainly, much of what has been a posteriori happened in this field, in the sphere of the Brazilian Society of Cardiology, was due to the appropriate rules established by both pioneers. Zé was also the first editor of the so-called Rebrampa, Revista Brasileira de Marcapasso, whose task, he accepted when he was confronted with the idea of "seeding the seeds" which would allow the development of this additional field in our medical setting, creating opportunity to expose the national scientific production, incipient in this field.

José Carlos was a MASTER and a PROFESSOR in the true sense of the terms. He graduated at Paulista Medical School. He was also educated as a thoracic surgeon at the time, and together with Dr. Gallucci, Viencete Forte, Enio Buffolo, and José Ernesto Succi was part of a high-quality group which has heightened the name of their Institution at a very high standard. He has been exposed to practically all cardiovascular diseases, achieving an eclectic, extensive, and complete education. The intensive clinical education back then, with detailed pre-, intra-, and postoperative discussions, provided the surgeons, at the time, with a high-quality clinical background, and one of the JC's greatest peculiar qualities, maybe the least known by its fellowships, was to make excellent clinical hypotheses and diagnoses. His presentations in Congresses demonstrated his capacity of giving excellent classes; in Symposia and Argumentation, he showed his knowledge, improvisation, and versatility, but only those who knew him well at his office, examining patients for the first time, had the opportunity to share his joy in setting up difficult clinical diagnoses. When the patient arrived with the exams requested and with the diagnosis he had suspected of, he was very happy and eager to show the assumed hypothesis and the right diagnosis.

How ironic, tragic, and sad was to hear from himself the verdict of his own diagnosis and the disease course time after a chest radiography performed due to a persistent cough. His initial remarks were: "they are trying to transmit an image of tranquility and benignity that does not exist, we are going to make all the efforts, but I am all 'fu.up', I am not going to last more than a couple of years, if so". These were pyrographed words, impossible to be forgotten. Why him? And right after his son's tragedy. He, of all people, did praise the value of life; he and his son, both so full of life. What such a "loss" for Bela, Veri, and Júnior.

The importance of JC, as a promoter in this specific medical field, becomes clear by the countless homage they have done to him by the Brazilian Society of Cardiovascular Surgery, DECA, SOCESP, INCOR, and IDPC through their cardiac stimulation sectors, fortunately, while he was still alive. They have translated the acknowledgement, the professional appreciation, and the many thanks that the practitioners saw in JC's profile. However, everyone has his/her own "faults". JC was stubborn, blockhead, passionate, quarrelsome, and even aggressive, if he felt offended, standing up for his opinion arrogantly, as well as taking a firm stand on what he believed was correct. However, José Carlos's image that will remain forever is that of a light-spirited, happy, responsible, useful, fellow, friend person who loved his profession, who laid great emphasis on putting a pacemaker in my mother when he did not have strengths to do it anymore, needing to sit down many times during the procedure to rest; he was always concerned with the professional quality offered to the patients, a true "Life-Love-Work-Lover".

His discernment, ingenuity, talent and imagination (inventiveness) made his surgical routine mixed up due to the difficulty of keeping detailed standardization required by a speciality such as cardiac surgery. From Enio's idea, he developed in his Doctorate, magnificently, a practical setting of experimental surgery, allowing the education of the Residents in several types of cardiac surgeries, further allowing that "Masters" of certain surgical techniques demonstrate it clearly, slowly, and repetitively to the youngest, if necessary. It was extremely important to give the sense of responsibility and long-lasting example to the undergraduate and post-graduate students, and residents. He played countless unforgettable jokes, such as that of a drop of water in the physician on duty's forehead and "to glue" the champagne cork in birthdays, hampering the champagne cork to come out the bottle.

Although extemporaneously, I take advantage of the opportunity to remember all the colleagues from SBHCI and SBCCV the need of continuous attention when using radiological equipment extendedly. After all, in a relatively short time we have actinic dermatitis in João Lourenço's hands, lymphoma in Samuel, and we have also lost Dirceu Vieira dos Santos, Décio Korman, and José Carlos, all of them due to neoplasia. José Carlos went to make happy, with his plays, games, and tricks, the "heavenly team", maybe disrupting the everlasting monotony and routine existing in Paradise, but certainly he will keep on doing his magic and plays, showing that after all, happiness exists. This "passarinho" flew and got away from our intimacy, but the seeds he left behind will remain and keep on showing good results, so says the family, the Cardiocir, the Brazilian Society of Cardiovascular Surgery, and the DECA.
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