For the doctor, seeking quality of life is a necessity for everyone
Dr. José Antônio Machado Júnior, 41 years old, is a doctor specializing in orthopedics-traumatology. An effective member of the Brazilian Spine Society, he has a postgraduate degree in pain treatment from Hospital das Clínicas, a postgraduate degree in pain intervention from Cetrus, in addition to being a pain monitor and coordinator of the endoscopy course at the same institution.
Son of a taxi driver and a nursing technician, he always had the freedom to choose what he would like to pursue in his life. And respect was one of the pillars of his decisions, especially due to his upbringing in a Christian home. “I was taught to respect others and try to make sure we take care of someone as if we were taking care of someone in our family”, he says.
The youngest has five other siblings, four of them only from his father, and remembers his childhood well spent. “Going with my parents to the park, riding my bike, I remember my school holidays in Passos (MG) at my uncles and grandparents’ house, which is the place I loved most. I remember playing ball in the street, hunting birds, having fun, going to the country club we were members of there in Minas, it was a very good thing”, says Dr. José.
In fact, the mining town of his childhood passion is also his hometown, but he never lived there. His mother, who worked in obstetrics and had an obstetrician best man at his wedding, Dr. Natanael, insisted that her son be born at the Passos hospital. “For this reason, I have a cultural background of the people of Minas Gerais, hospitable, who like cheese bread, cheese, sweet guava pastes, tamale. I remember a lot during the holidays my uncles and cousins preparing tamale. They took bags and bags of corn and each of us had a role in preparing it. The children’s role was to draw straws. Those that were a little bigger took the hair out of the corn. The older ones cut it. The women worked on the seasoning. It was a cool family program”, he recalls.
At the age of 15 he started working and managed to become a partner with his 27-year-old brother, where they took over the canteen of the karate school where his brother taught. At 16, he bought his brother’s share and took over management alone. All his dedication to work was also seen in his studies, in which he calls himself very studious. “I never repeated the school year, I always fought to pass and not leave any outstanding issues for my parents, because it was already difficult to pay. My sister and I were on scholarships, so all I had to do was study hard so as not to disappoint my family.”
Medicine as a priesthood
Graduated from the University of Taubaté, after graduation he served in the Army as a doctor for a year, where he was a lieutenant in the 22Blog logistics barracks, an experience that added a lot to his professional career. But his choice of profession was something that came naturally, as he believes that a doctor’s greatest quality is that he enjoys taking care of people. “I think that real medicine is a priesthood. The rest, technique, knowledge, manual skills of a surgeon, this is something that you will develop and train. There are those who have gift and talent, and I think that gift and talent are related to the person who can visualize a procedure once and execute it masterfully, and always try to improve themselves”, highlights the orthopedist.
For him, there is no perfect moment in his career, but rather seek constant improvement. “I think that at every moment you must invent yourself. Each surgery is a surgery, each patient is a patient. Being a doctor is not a choice, you don’t decide to be a doctor, medicine chooses you. I think that message is what makes the distinction in loving what you do. It’s about looking people in the eye and trying to help the person, regardless of the time of day, their financial condition, the type of problem, so I think this is the secret of medicine”, says Machado.
After the army, he lived in São José dos Campos, in a municipal hospital. The institution served a population of almost one million inhabitants, including adjacent cities and the north coast. It was a very intense three years, as the demand for patients with serious cases was high. “My boss was Dr. Laís Pinheiros, for whom I have great affection, enormous respect, admiration for everything she taught me and what she does. I had great masters in residency, perhaps one of the greatest orthopedists in Brazil, who was my boss, Dr. Koji Kojima”, he recalls.
After finishing orthopedics, he went to São Paulo to specialize in spine surgery, where he joined one of the largest groups in São Paulo. “My boss was Dr René Kusabara, who took my hand and taught me step by step spinal surgery, an extremely renowned surgeon, with a huge sample of operated patients. I had the opportunity to work in large hospitals in São Paulo.”
After completing the spine surgery, he took the society’s title test, becoming a member of the Brazilian Spine Society, being one of the examiners of the test for those who want to join the society as a specialist. “After that, I went to Hospital das Clínicas, in the postgraduate course of Professor Manuel Jacobs, one of the biggest names in Neurosurgery in Brazil. After finishing the pain specialization, I went to do pain and regenerative intervention at Cetrus, alongside big names, such as José Luís, an anesthetist, the Brazilian National Team doctor, Ronaldo Lins, the doctor who does the regeneration part, who It’s Doctor Demange, in short, I’ve been alongside great teachers. I became a postgraduate monitor for pain intervention. Today, I am part of the team of spine surgeons performing endoscopic surgery”, he highlights. Headed by Dr. Davi Del Curto, today he is one of the endoscopy coordinators at the institution’s postgraduate course, as well as a master’s student at UNIFESP (Federal University of São Paulo), doing what he has always believed is part of medicine: improving knowledge.
The learning he learned at home is also part of his professional life, as he reveals that he treats his patients as if he were treating a family member. When I make an incision, it’s as if I’m operating on someone in my family. When I open up a little more, when I relax a little more, in short, when I do my work it’s as if I were treating my sister, my mother, my wife, my children. I think that when doctors think this way, they never make mistakes”, he says.
Family as a foundation
Married to an intensive care pediatrician, he is the father of Gustavo, four years old, and considers them his reasons for living. “Because she is a doctor and understands my day-to-day life, Maitê is my escape point, a companion and a therapist that I have in moments of anxiety, difficulties, of sharing successes and failures in the profession”, she recalls.
In 2010 he met her during an internship at Hospital Emílio Ribas and with the exchange of glances, a relationship began that has lasted 13 years. “I think the purpose of life is when you leave your seed trying to pass on everything you learned from your parents to your child. I believe that anyone who has not had the pleasure of sharing responsibilities, love, and companionship with another person cannot say that they are a complete person. And being a father truly changes your life. It’s your heart that beats outside your chest. I can’t imagine my life without my son today.”
For the traumatologist, having a family is a great safe haven and, therefore, an event when he was 19 years old was a great turning point, when he was going with his parents and siblings to visit family in Passos. “A runaway truck crossed the median and hit my family’s car. From that moment on, my life was never the same. I lost my father in that accident. I lost a piece of myself and the marks of that injury, that trauma, remained. This scar that I carry on my face from that accident and what I went through transformed me into the person I am today, determined and not afraid to fight. Talking about this subject is very difficult. We went out to see the grandparents and Apoliana (my sister) and I returned home without our father”, he says.
Because he believes in God, it is essential for him to maintain faith, focus and strength in life, as he knows there will be difficult times. “If I could go back in time, I would have hugged and kissed my father more, but I accept that his time has come. I try to focus on the fact that I am an extremely blessed person, God had a lot of mercy on my life, preserving me from the accident, keeping my mother, keeping my sister, keeping our home. He also gave me a generous wife, a wonderful son, a rewarding profession. I think I just must be grateful, not regret it”, emphasizes Dr. José.
Career and life plans
Machado believes that nowadays surgeries are experiencing their moment of splendor, but he wants to develop more and more innovative techniques in the spine area. “Today we can perform minimally invasive surgery, with cuts smaller than one centimeter, in addition to increasingly serving the elderly population, who are more fragile in this sense. Therefore, I want to train more surgeons to make this technique possible and not just stay in São Paulo. I hope that it can expand throughout Brazil and, thus, be able to help more patients, in addition to developing techniques and technologies that will perhaps contribute to the surgery of the future”, he points out.
To put this desire into practice, in 2025 he plans to spend some time in South Korea, which is one of the birthplaces of this new technique, and further refine his knowledge and surgical precision.
Paying more attention to physical health is another of your goals. “My focus is to complete a marathon and I am training for that. I also want to see my son’s development in this direction more and more, which is why I want him to also dedicate himself to sport. In the same way that I had the pleasure of competing, I want my son to experience the feeling of victories and defeats, the pleasure of fighting with yourself and showing that you can want to become a better person. I think that my dream today is personally projected on my son’s realization”.
Further leveraging your podcast is another goal to be achieved. “I’ve had a project for a year called ‘Our Podcast Column’. Maybe this is a real challenge, because it’s an area that I don’t master. I communicate with my patient in the office, but I don’t communicate with the microphone. I don’t communicate with a person who I can’t look in the eye. So learning how to do this has been a challenge. Being able to reach the largest number of people, spread knowledge about this channel that we try to select our guests with such care and try to extract it in a simple, tasty way, in a way that the person listening enjoys the conversation and, most importantly, she understands the message”, points out Machado.
If you could summarize your podcast in one sentence, it would be trying to live a better quality of life. “I think that’s what we must look for. When we leave home, regardless of our profession, we need to have a quality of life. It’s about getting to the end of the day, at the end of the week, breathing and saying, ‘Wow, I helped, I’m happy’. And that’s what personal fulfillment is, it’s being able to put your head on the pillow and say ‘another day won, with victory, with satisfaction’”, he concludes.