Recording - 08-19-2023 14:21:54

00:02 This is Mark Swiontkowski still in Albuquerque at the 20th Century Orthopedic association meeting. And I've got my first pair of repeat offenders in terms of the breadth of their memories of individuals who serve this organization and other organizations in our field. And they're going to be discussing an individual that I actually don't believe I ever had the privilege of meeting. But I knew the name. And we're going to start with Steve McCollam and then we're going to go with Danny Guy and we're going to remember Bob Wells. So take it away, Steve.

00:37 So hello, this is my first memory of Bob, begins in 1987 when I started looking, casting around for a place to land after my residency and fellowship. And I met Bob in the Marriott Marquis Hotel, downtown Atlanta. It was at the Academy meeting. And he was recently. He was a past president of the Academy about four or five years before that, maybe six years. And he interviewed me and I just loved him from the get go. And so I finally joined Peachtree Orthopedic Clinic. And within six months of me being there, Bob came up to me one day and says, how would you like to travel to Haiti with me to go down there and help the poor? So he told me all about it, that him and Bob and that Jim Funk, also a member of this organization, had started traveling there in 1955 and had been going there three times a year ever since then. So I went down to Haiti and had this wonderful experience and he was just a wonderful man. The most amazing thing about Bob was that most of us like to hope we can think around one corner. Bob could think around three or four different corners, had the most incredibly organizational mind ever. He had been one of the early board of counselors chairs in the 70s.

01:48 79.

01:49 79. And then he ascended to the presidency of the Academy in 81. 82 and was just a prince. He looked out for me for my whole practice career. Was a great mentor, just passed away about two years ago. Lovely man. And I'm going to let Danny talk about Haiti and how he got involved in Haiti because it has to do with Bob Wells.

02:07 Yeah. And I didn't meet Bob at the same time that Steve did, but Steve is a hand in upper extremity surgeon and was, was, I think, modestly uncomfortable with the amount of lower extremity disease in Haiti. So I would be willing to do lower extremity disease. So I started going to Haiti in 1993, I believe, or 92, something like that. And we'd go every year and we learned so much from Bob about taking care of all this stuff that you would never see here.

02:39 Sure.

02:39 So I am fond of saying that the most important thing that you need and have is the oldest edition of.

02:47 Campbell's that you can find, one that included polio references.

02:52 Absolutely. But, I mean, you really learn to take care. Rickets is everywhere down there. And so that used to be something I had to memorize for a board exam, but not after being down there, because you saw the X ray, you knew what it was, knew how to treat them, did tons of osteotomies and neglected fractures and so forth. And one of the things Bob would do, he had gotten to the point where it wasn't any surgery. So he'd do some clinicians, and then he was on their board, and he'd be schmoozing around and doing different stuff. And then when he did all that, we'd be hard day in the or, we're exhausted and we're ready to go to bed and, you know, go back and have a beer or something at the place we were staying. And down the hallway walks. Bob was a couple of X rays in his hand. And we're going, we're gonna do more. But he worked us pretty hard, and. But we went there with a good purpose, and it was really rewarding. And you'd come back refreshed for your usual practice, and you realize how good you had it. And again, just keeping us in these clinics and seeing stuff we'd never seen before and just really able to guide us in the treatment of it. And he was just a wonderful man. Now, in addition to the academy service, the Boca, and as president of the academy, he also was a pretty big deal in the city of Atlanta. And he was the first Braves team doctor when they came to Atlanta from Milwaukee. Yeah, from Milwaukee. Well, they finally found the right place. Look how they thrived. But nonetheless, he'd like to tell the story about doing the first arthroscopy on one of the Braves. I believe it was Dale Murphy. He said, well, I really didn't know what I was doing, but he's still able to become an mvp. So he did mess him up. And Bob, he was politically very smart. He really had to speak to people. And we were coming to the airport one time, though, and he always liked to have a little drink of. Of spirits at night. There's no ice down there. So he'd get a bottle of vodka and kind of a Haitian martini, if you would, which is a glass, and vodka. And he had Got it to the duty free, and then he forgot it in the chaos of baggage claim. And he was running around because he really wanted that night cocktail. We didn't get it. We did not get it. A long week. It was a long week. He was down there after the earthquake. Steve and I both went different times. Steve went first and I followed him, and he was down there helping with the crisis. Just kind of triaging stuff, I think. More different.

05:39 I have one fond memory of Danny I and Haiti one year, speaking about Bob having finished surgery, but knowing it being this just font of knowledge. We. We had seen this kid in the clinic, he was about 8 years old, and we were somehow able to diagnose the fact that he was paraporetic and had pots, basically. Pots. Paraplegic. Going to become a paraplegic. And we said, go get Bob Wells because he was in some board. We got him out. He goes, oh, yeah, you just need to do. You just need to go around the front, do a costotransversectomy, go around the front of the spine, drain the abscess. It's no big deal. You'll be able to do that. So Danny and I look at each other incredulously and go, well, okay. Neither one of us had done a touch of spine in 15 or 20 years. So we went back to Campbell's, the oldest version, of course. And there was one paragraph and one picture and one picture on how to do this. So I took the book with me to bed every night, read it about. Read that paragraph about five times, tried to memorize it. And then we kept that boy to the last day, and we took him to surgery. And Danny and I kind of looked at you and said, there's nobody more qualified in Haiti to do this.

06:44 For the best he's going to get.

06:45 Let's just get after this. So we went around on the river.

06:48 Let's pray first.

06:50 Exactly. Continuously. And we had some guy holding the book of Campbells in the OR for us so we could take a look at it. And we got that rib, got the right level, which is, you know, a whole struggle. Got around the front. I remember going around the front and passing around the aorta to the abscess and sticking my finger in the abscess and drawing back pus instead of blood. I was like. Joe was so relieved. He said, danny, check me. Make sure I'm in the right spot. He came back with the finger soaking with pus. So we knew. We knew we had done some good. Of course, in Haiti, you never get any Follow up. So we should know what happened. All we knew is we got rid of his puss without killing the boy.

07:26 The way Bob got interested in orthopedics because he had planned to be obgyn, and he, I think, went to Korea, but he was actually at evac hospital in Japan. And so he was just a general medical officer at that point. And he. But they put him in charge of the orthopedic ward, and he had a good master sergeant out there that managed everything. Corpsman. And so he took care of the orthopedic ward and got the bug, and he came back and trained Campbell Clinic.

08:00 True.

08:01 Another of the long line of Campbell Clinic presence, but I would say of that group, he's probably the least known as being from Campbell Clinic.

08:09 Yes. I didn't. I was completely unaware. Just New Atlanta and.

08:13 Yeah.

08:15 Well, what was he like? Was he a jokester? I mean, you mentioned he's very skilled politically and knew how to speak with people.

08:24 Always naturally dressed, I would say, always looked really sharp and handsome guy.

08:32 Yeah.

08:33 We went to his 80th birthday party up in the mountains.

08:35 Yeah. He would listen carefully to what people had to say, and then he always had a very cogent, logical answer to the problem. But he would not try to take up all the air in the room, make sure everybody got heard and was heard before he spoke. So he was that kind of guy. Not boisterous, not out there, but always had a smile on his face and could laugh. Another story. Bob came into me one time after he was retired and said, steve, I've got this thumb CMC arthritis, and I just. I don't want to mess around with injections. I don't want all this therapy, all this spleen crap. I just want you to fix it. So I said, well, okay. So I took him to surgery, did the classic, you know, wildly thumb CMC arthroplasty. Took him about six months to start liking me again. And later, about a year later, he goes, steve, I wish I'd done some conservative care before surgery. That was harder than I thought. But I really thought of him as a. As a father figure, as a very important mentor for me. He was just a wonderful man who gave a lot. He was chairman of our hospital at Piedmont Hospital. I mean, anything he did, he usually rose to the presidency. Not because he wanted the title, because he could do the work and had an extremely organized mind to get it done.

09:50 And he was blessed. I would say he was blessed to have the two founding partners with him to be just great orthopedic. Surgeons, Jim Funk and Scoot Diamond. And you know, that was pretty good luck for him. And sometimes you make your luck. And I think there's a bit of both there because it was a great, great orthopedic surgeon. It's great.

10:14 They started out as three in 1960, Jim Funk started in 53, and now we're about 40.

10:21 Well, that's a good thing to leave behind a group of 40 very competent and ethical individuals. And it's been fun listening to you, gentlemen, because I did not I did not know Dr. Wells, and I know him better now. And it's my hope that through these recordings that people will get to know some of the people that were key in this organization. Of course, more important in the academy and definitely more important in the city of Atlanta and in Haiti. So thank you, gentlemen, very much. I appreciate your time.

10:55 Thank you, Mark.

10:55 Thank you.