• DOI:10.20452/PAMW.1235
• Corpus ID: 187798362

A painful leave‑taking

@article{Kokot2012APL,
  title={A painful leave‑taking},
  author={Franciszek Kokot},
  journal={Polish archives of internal medicine},
  year={2012},
  volume={122},
  pages={29-30}
}

• F. Kokot
• Published 1 April 2012
• Medicine
• Polish archives of internal medicine

29 It was an icy February day. I was sitting in my office preparing my presentation for the forth­ coming 37th Congress of the Polish Society of Internal Medicine, which was scheduled for April 12–14, 2012. Suddenly, the telephone rang and I immediately recognized the voice of my friend, Peter Gajewski, the nearest collabora­ tor of Professor Andrew Szczeklik. „What hap­ pened? How can I help you?” I asked Peter. Af­ ter a while of complete silence Peter said: „Fran­ cis, I have a very bad message for you – Andrew died this morning”. There were no more ques­ tions and answers. This message completely para­ lyzed my voice. I was sitting immobilized at my desk while 50 years of friendship with Andrew flashed through my brain. This friendship start­ ed in the early 1970s, when Andrew, a young doc­ tor, worked on the diagnostic value of gamma­ ­gluatamyl ­transpeptidase and cobalt activat­ ed acylase together with Dr M. Orłowski and A. Szewczuk. As I too was inter ested in clinical enzymology, our friendship strengthened from year to year. Beginning with 1979, he became the author of a chapter in the textbook of in­ ternal medicine, which was edited by me during the next 25 years, and which, after 8 editions, was replaced by a large textbook – Internal Medicine under the editorship of Andrew, and which in an updated version appears every year since 2005. His medical textbook is complemented by two lit­ erary masterpieces – Catharsis: on the Art of Medicine and Kore: on sickness, the sick, and the search for the soul of medicine, which were already pub­ lished in several foreign languages. Andrew was not only an experienced teach­ er but also a leading scientist in the field of as­ pirin asthma, well known all over the world. He was awarded the degree of doctor honoris causa by five universities, the honorary membership of more than ten inter national scientific societ­ ies, and numerous esteemed inter national hon­ ours and distinctions. His sudden heart arrest left thousands of be­ reaved patients, for whom he always was the A painful leave ­taking