A difficult story, of pain and suffering, that of Laura Boldrini about the tumor from which she was struck and which she discovered in April 2021.
A diagnosis that came almost by chance, and after a year of discomfort in the leg that the former Speaker of the House had attributed to an inflammation of the sciatic nerve.
To convince her to be seen, as recalled by Boldrini herself in an interview with Corriere della Sera, an osteopath neighbor, met on the balcony during the first lockdown.
From there an MRI and the very heavy sentence: “Tumor lesion in the femur: a chondrosarcoma. I have to do the Tac, the Pet, the Total body ... ".
Boldrini then relives a nightmare, that of her mother who died of cancer: "I accompanied her to the lift for the operating room - she explains - and it was the last time I could talk to her: everything went wrong, it's over in intensive care, she remained attached to the machines for two weeks, exhaled her last breath there. Then my sister Lucia left at 46. She was very religious, she decided to let God's will happen. A punitive dimension of faith, which I contested to the end; but my sister didn't give in an inch. He also refused palliative care ".
At this point, first the refusal takes over - “maybe the doctor is making the mistake”, he initially thought - and then the gathering of information online: “I started looking for information, thinking about what could happen to me. Stay lame. Losing the leg. Getting nailed in a bed. A paradox, after a life always marked by movement, missions in war zones ... Now I had a thousand hypotheses before me. And they all horrified me ”.
Then the entrance to the hospital, and the discovery of the best and the worst of the human soul. Among the other sick people, also a girl just nineteen and “already facing the test of life. Shy, sweet, always afraid of disturbing the nurses ... ".
The intervention succeeds “thanks to Alessandro Gasbarrini - says Boldrini - a hero. One capable of operating for fifteen consecutive hours. My operation didn't last long, but it was complicated: the professor removed 25 centimeters of the femur, inserted a 45 centimeter titanium prosthesis, which weighs an extra kilo and is set on one side in what remains of the femur , on the other in the basin .. ". Finally, intensive therapy “where you lose the notion of time. When I heard my daughter on the phone, the tension melted away, and I finally cried ”.
Upon returning to Montecitorio, the applause of the opponents too: "I was pleased", says the deputy Pd. He adds: “I want to fight for the sick, for those who experience a stigma that persists after recovery, and cannot access credit, take out a mortgage, apply for a life insurance policy, adopt a child. In the Senate there is a bill by my namesake Paola Boldrini on the right to be forgotten: after ten years, when you are no longer at risk, your illness must no longer be mentioned ".
The decision to talk about the disease "three reasons" that led her to do so. “Helping to unhinge the prejudice that gives people so much discomfort. Sharing the condition with those who lived it, also to encourage others not to be silent: silence isolates, silence depresses. Transforming the battle against disease into a battle of civilization ”.
(Unioneonline / vl)
