After a career of 40 years including more than 30 years at the Canberra Hospital, gastroenterologist Dr Paul Pavli is retiring but not stepping away entirely from the great challenge of solving inflammatory bowel disease.
He is retiring from day-to-day patient care but will continue his roles in teaching at the ANU School of Medicine and Psychology and working in research, including focusing on finding a cure for inflammatory bowel disease, of which Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis are the most common forms and which, in half the cases, affect people under the age of 27.
"It's becoming more common and we don't really understand why," he said.
A personable 70-year-old, Dr Pavli has also obviously made an impact on his patients' lives over the last three decades, many of them gathering recently to say their own heartfelt goodbyes to him.
"I regard [tennis champ] Ash Barty as a role model on how to bow out," he said.
"I'm not on top, I'm coming down on the other side. But I don't want to be like Nadal, losing in the first round [at the end of your career]."
The son of migrants from Cyprus - his dad was a cook and his mum a textiles factory worker - Dr Pavli grew up in Chatswood and studied at Sydney University, starting his career at the Royal North Shore and Concord hospitals.
He moved to Canberra in 1985 to do a PhD on inflammation at the Australian National University.
He grew to love the national capital and never left but also found Canberra to be a critical move in his career.
"I always say I was in the right spot at the right time," he said.
Dr Pavli got a research fellowship and then a job as staff specialist at the Canberra Hospital, where he has been for the last more than 30 years.
His research put him in the box seat for understanding and applying a class of drugs called biologics to the treatment of patients with inflammatory bowel disease.
The biologics started to emerge in the early 1990s and finally became accessible in 2007 when they were put on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. It meant patients could be treated successfully with these drugs rather than with steroids or surgery, which often meant a colostomy bag.
"As soon as they became available, I started using them," he said.
Dr Pavli said his patients meant "a lot" to him.
"I mean they're the raison d'etre," he said.
"I've seen my patients really sick and they've got better with the biologics and it's been fantastic. It's genuinely life-transforming therapy.
"You've got somebody who's sick, you can't go out. They can't go to the movies, they can't go on a long-haul jet flight because they're rushing to the toilet and if there's a queue to the loo, then they're in trouble. And they just feel lousy. They don't feel like going out.
"And what's happened is these people get back to being completely normal. You couldn't tell there was anything at all wrong with them."
May was Crohn's and Colitis Awareness Month, with more than 100,000 Australians living with inflammatory bowel disease, and more than 600 patients on biologics at the Canberra Hospital.
"Which would be one of the top two or three centres in Australia," he said.
"People kind of think of Canberra Hospital not being up there with the rest of them, but we are."
Dr Pavli and his wife, fellow doctor Janelle Hamilton, have three children - a daughter who is a doctor in Sydney, a son who is a lawyer in Sydney and another daughter completing her PhD in New York.
In the years ahead, Dr Pavli will be focusing on research to find a cure for inflammatory bowel disease.
He said it was still unknown what caused the inflammation.
"We think that there's a genetic background but there has to be an environmental trigger, because most people who have got the genes that predispose to Crohn's or colitis don't actually get the disease unless they come in contact with an environmental agent, a germ of some sort, most likely, or it could be something in the food. But I think it's most likely to be a germ," he said.
Finding the answer will occupy him in his "retirement".
"When you're doing clinical medicine, you can't actually spend long periods of time involving yourself in reading and being on the computer and analysing data. I want to have a go at seeing if I can do that again," he said.
As for good bowel health, Dr Pavli advised people to have a fibre-rich breakfast every day. They should have get a colonoscopy from the age of 40 if there is a family history of bowel disease or if there is any rectal bleeding or changes in their poo.
He was also glad to see that self-testing poo tests for bowel cancer had been expanded, with people now aged from 45, rather than 50, eligible to screen with the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program, the change announced in the May federal budget.
