Anecdotes
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Please send your own AO anecdotes or pictures from AO events which you
would like to share to amirah.blackmore@aofoundation.org
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I have many AO anecdotes I would like to share. The best is when I went to
see Professor Müller operate on a Monday morning in Lindenhofspital in Bern
during my AO Fellowship in 1994.
MEM was performing his last 20 operations before retiring from private
practice. MEM had his photographer Lottie record each one for posterity.
He was 76 years of age, the most famous surgeon in the world and brilliant
still. I was 37 and about to become a Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon in
England after many years of training and examinations.
Professor Müller was in theatre at 7am prompt planning the surgery with
tracing paper laid on the X-ray and ready for an 8 o'clock start. Woe
betide the operating team if the start time was even a minute late than 0800
sharp.
One Monday he was particularly anxious. Why was he pacing up and down?
"Was anything wrong?", I asked. Frau Martha Müller was coming to visit
her husband in the operating theatre, something she hadn't done since they
worked together in Ethiopia many years before. Everything had to be
perfect.
The operating room was crowded: his resident Marcus Pisan, the 2 AO Fellows,
(myself and Simon Lambert), Diego Fernandez with 2 glamorous companions (!) in
tow and many others from the clinic, paying their respects to the great man on
this special day. Professor Müller was keen to show the assembled crowd his
latest "toy". Howard Rosen had sent it over from New York as a present
to his old friend. It was the latest thing in the USA. We waited, barely able
to contain our excitement.
A jovial Maurice E Müller
He asked us to follow him into the bathroom. We were puzzled. What could be
so exciting in a Swiss toilet? We crammed into the cubicle. Müller
leant over the toilet bowl and to a hushed crowd said: "watch this, another
advance in hygiene for surgeons!"
He pulled the toilet handle sharply.
Suddenly, a fast and furious jet of hot water shot straight up into the air,
hitting the great man full in the face! Everyone gasped in shock,
uncertain as to how to react. Silence. MEM was dripping wet, soaked to the
skin, his grey hair plastered to his scalp, his theatre scrubs soaking wet.
Catastrophe!
I burst out laughing, laughing fit to burst. Professor Müller looked like a
little boy, suddenly drenched wet by a garden hose. No-one else laughed. They
all looked at me, horrified. How ill-mannered, how disrespectful, how dare he
laugh at their Master?! I turned to MEM to apologise for my appalling faux pas,
thinking that I would be sent home to England in disgrace, my AO career
over.
He was laughing too, a real belly laugh, eyes twinkling, shaking with
happiness! He had seen the joke. My career was saved!
A truly great man, able to laugh at himself in a moment of comedy genius. I
felt true affection for him at that moment. Magic!
Kevin Newman
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A young Suthorn in action in Davos
My first trip to Davos
In December 1978 after acquiring my orthopedic diploma, I got the chance to
attend the AO Course in Davos, Switzerland. I had never foreseen traveling to
Switzerland and my only impression was of chocolate and pictures of hills
covered with snow.
This first trip to Switzerland totally changed my career and my life in the
orthopedic field. Since then my work has mainly been concentrated on treating
trauma patients and my number of trips to Switzerland has exceeded 40 by
now.
Some very well wrapped up Asian course participants in Switzerland
As I had never experienced being in a country with such cold weather, I did
not think to take a sweater with me up in the plane. When I departed from
Bangkok International Airport, the temperature was 30º Celsius. But the
temperature upon my first step in Zurich Airport was about 0º Celsius. I was
almost frozen before I could dig my sweater out of my luggage. At the courses
participants from the countries with warm climates wore three to four layers of
clothing as December marks the start of winter in Davos.
Prof Willenegger (left) with Suthorn (second from left), Robert Mathys Sr (third from left) and others
The food was also quite different. Normally Thai people eat spicy food. At
our first meal we had to ask for Tabasco sauce to add to the European-style
'tasteless' food. The waiter brought the sauce to us warning that it was very
spicy. Around ten of us consumed the whole bottle of Tabasco in one meal, which
surprised the waiter who said that a bottle of Tabasco normally lasted for
several months. Dr Thamrongrat, who was one of our party, then informed him to
prepare 12 bottles of this sauce to serve us during our one-week stay in the
hotel as we would need it for every dish, from appetizer, salad, soup to main
course-for everything with the exception of dessert. That was the reason why
the sauce was used up rapidly in only one meal!!!
Suthorn Bavonratanavech
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I'm Dr Aliaa Muna from Baghdad, Iraq.
I attended the AO Principles Course held in Amman, Jordan, in February 2008.
A nice Slovenian resident and I were the only two females and we worked
together on the practical exercises.
On one of these practical exercises, we were told to perform a mandibular
and maxillary osteotomy on the model, using plates and screws to fix it. It was
very cumbersome to work on these models with the stout plastic skin-like cover.
We unpeeled the skin cover just like in the movie "Face/Off" and
started to work in a better, easier way. However, we were caught by the faculty
members and the other trainees started to do the same.
We all had a great laugh at the situation and unfortunately I did not manage
to take a picture of it. It was so much fun because the faculty members took it
all in good spirits.
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My favorite anecdote:
Being sent as a young resident in 1985 to the Jubilee AO Davos Course by
Harald Tscherne, I was deeply impressed by a perfect course organization and
an, for me up until that point, unseen level of didactics, presentations, and
practical exercises.
However, when asked to remember specific details I was mostly impressed by
three circumstances:
- Being able to get a photograph showing Maurice Müller together with me and
my colleagues (see below)
- Riding uphill together with Martin Allgöwer in the same compartment of the
Parsenn ski piste. Martin wore a bobble cap and talked with us about skiing
techniques.
- Having received a Swiss watch as a present on the occasion of the Jubilee
AO Davos Course, I entered the Davos swimming pool thanks to a sponsored sports
ticket with about 25 fellow participants to check the water resistance of the
watch in a practical experiment...the watch turned out to be completely
waterproof and is still in perfect shape today!
Tim Pohlemann
From right to left: Tim Pohlemann, Prof Lobenhoffer (now knee expert group chairman) Prof Südkamp (research), Maurice Müller, Prof Maghsudi (chairman of a trauma center in northern Germany), Man in yellow, name unknown, an AO fellow from South America
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"AO has changed not only my career but my life."
This is exactly what happened to me when as a young veterinary surgeon I
attended my first AO Principles Course in Davos in 1971. We veterinary surgeons
did not have enough people to act as instructors, so much of the knowledge
presented was derived from research and clinical work in the human field. But I
remember how for the full five days I sat there and thought, "yes, of course,
that is what happens to traumatized bone and that is what we must do if we want
to treat fractures!" The stimulating attitude of Allgöwer, Müller, Willenegger,
Perren and many others filled me with the desire and knowledge that this is
what I want to do.
Peter Poll (far right) acting as an instructor during the practical exercises in Davos in the 1970s
I came back the next year and we had been asked to bring some of our own
cases for discussion. I decided that much could be learned from my own failures
where the AO Principles had been neglected, and so I brought a few of those and
discussed them with the group.
During the Friday dinner one of the human surgeons, Dr Howard Rosen (famous
for his moustache which he kept in shape with bone wax) who took a great
interest in the veterinary group, came to me and said that he wanted a word
with me after dessert. My wife was with me and I said to her that I expected
that I would be spoken to sharply because everybody else had shown their
successes whereas I had shown that failures were possible. I was greatly
surprised when he told me that he respected this attitude very much and would I
like to be an instructor on the coming courses? I don't think I had ever been
so surprised and so honored before! Being an instructor in the AO Davos Courses
was, and is, a position of extremely high standing in our profession.
Peter Poll with the (then) HRH Princess Beatrix, now the Queen of the Netherlands, during the World Small Animal Veterinary Association congress
From there on I participated, under the general guidance of Bruce Hohn from
Columbus, Ohio, in many courses in Davos and other European locations, until I
finished clinical work and took an office job at my university. I can look back
with pride on my many grateful patients and their owners, as well as my many
years of gratifying clinical work. I have always found it very stimulating to
share knowledge and experiences with colleagues.
I can honestly say that the fact that my colleagues made me a Honorary
Member of our professional body and that Her Majesty the Queen awarded me a
knighthood of the Order of Orange-Nassau
(Ridder in de Orde van Oranje-Nassau) is due to that lucky week I took part
in the AO Principles Course in Davos.
A week which not only changed my career, but my life.
Peter Poll DVM PhD (retd)
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Please send your own AO anecdotes or pictures from AO events which you
would like to share to amirah.blackmore@aofoundation.org
