“I tend to believe that people who have touched the bottom and are as lucky as to have emerged again, having seen the filth in the bottom, the scum floating around, they are the right kind of people because they have got to know life first-hand. Someone who lives in affluence – and it means different things to different people – whose life is easy and challenge-free, does not know much about life.”
“I knew ten million pairs of eyes were watching Havel’s wellbeing. I was aware of it. But I was telling my colleagues, and I firmly stand by it, that even distinguished patients have to receive standard treatment. Standard treatment yields standard results. Out-of-the-ordinary treatment is linked to out-of-the-ordinary results. Sometimes better than usual, but sometimes worse. It is essential to proceed as usual, the way we are accustomed to, something we can do and repeat every week. Let’s do what we know. That’s why we have been selected, why else?” – “And what kind of patient was he?” – “Well, frankly, he had exceptional manners. I’ve said it on the media before. His surgery was followed by pneumonia, and it was necessary to perform tracheotomy. These people cannot speak as they have a pipe in their windpipe. And after we’d performed it, he came to, took a piece of paper and wrote down: ,Thank you, professor.’ I haven’t kept the slip of paper and I’ve never stopped regretting it. I’d show it to all those… I’ve performed tracheotomy on dozens of patients, but I cannot remember a single one who’s said thank you. I’d show these people. Look, a president, and he knows how to say ,thank you’.”
“The way we are is partly genetics and partly the influence of our environment. I don’t remember being firm and decisive as a boy, but the job has taught me. Thing is, everyone is hugely shaped by TV, you know, where a surgeon is something like a slightly better-off butcher. And that’s nothing like reality. Those situations in which it’s a question of seconds and minutes are few and far between. Those get blown out of proportion. When I think of old Czech films, it goes something like this: The surgeon staggers out of the operating theatre, sweat is pouring down his face, he lights up, and the patient’s relatives come running to him, ‘Doctor, how is he?’ – ‘Give me a second.’ This is TV, people like watching it, but in real life nothing could be further. You know, a flashing ambulance is flying down the streets, everyone makes way for it, and when it arrives at the hospital, they bring the stretcher out, and it’s like, where’s the nurse: ,Oh, she’s gone upstairs to see about something.’ –‘Get the doctor!’ – ‘Hang on, he’s doing something.’ Let’s not turn it into a drama! Yes, sometimes there are situations when your vital functions are in danger, when someone is choking, or blood is spurting out of him, that’s when it’s a question of minutes, and not hours. He can be dead in three or four minutes, so you have to act fast. But such situations are rare. Surgery can be dramatic, that’s why it works well in TV programmes. A programme about a dermatological department would probably be less exciting for the audience.”
Pavel Pafko was born on July 3, 1940, in Bratislava into a Czech-Slovak family. In the 1930s, his Slovak father Gejza Pafko was studying law in Prague and during his studies met his future wife. After getting his degree, they got married and moved to Košice, Slovakia, which they left for Bratislava after World War II had broken out. After the first air-raid on Bratislava in 1944, the mother and her children moved to their relative’s house in a small village under the Tatras, where they remained until the end of the war. Pavel Pafko started primary school in Bratislava in 1946, then went on to an eleven-year secondary school from which he graduated just before he turned seventeen. In the meantime, following the communist coup of 1948, his father was dismissed from his post as the head of the tax department of the Slovak Ministry of Finance and started working as a mere clerk at the Slovak National Winemaking Company. Pavel Pafko started studying medicine at the Prague Medical School in 1957 and graduated in 1963. Following his studies, he first worked at the Anatomy Institute in Prague and later transferred to the surgical clinic of the Faculty of Medicine of Charles University, where he has stayed until today despite his retirement. Several weeks before the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968, he had been invited for an internship in Nordhorn, Germany, which he duly started in September of the same year. He stayed for a year and returned to Czechoslovakia in September 1969. During the onset of the Velvet Revolution, he was on sick leave after a severe jaw injury. However, he says the transition had little effect on his work, as medicine is apolitical. After long preparations, he and Walter Klepetko from Vienna opened a lung transplant unit at the Faculty Hospital in Karlovo Square in December 1997. Pavel Pafko became publicly recognised after treating the then president of the Czech Republic, Václav Havel, who had a lung tumour. In 2013, he received a Medal of Merit from the hands of president Miloš Zeman. In 2016, he was knighted for his service to the Czech Medical Profession, and in 2020, he received the Arnošt Lustig Prize. Professor Pavel Pafko is an active sportsman, who follows four basic pillars of a good life: activity, diet, soul, and sleep.
