Alessandro and his cardiopathic son who died before the transplant: «I look at the sky and I think it's up there»

«Yes, I can imagine my son in heaven».

The same sky that scans for work?

«It's a professional deformation: as soon as he gets up in the morning, the meteorologist looks up there. I always do, and yes, I think about my son.

Are you a believer?

“Faith and reason are not complementary. I'm a man of science, for the rest let's say I live in doubt».

Alessandro Gallo is the man of the sun and the clouds. He is the meteorologist who on the columns of the Unione Sarda anticipates the mood of the weather, so it is not easy to track him down from the rigor of the mathematical and physical models that read the dynamics of the atmosphere and the celestial vault. Retired Air Force Marshal, from Cagliari, 58 years old, married to Barbara and father of two boys: Daniele, majoring in Philosophy, and Matteo, the eldest son, born with congenital heart disease and died in October 2022 in an intensive care bed of Sant'Orsola of Bologna. He had just turned 31, and since August - when everything crashed - he had come off the transplant list: his body was no longer able to receive a new heart. "The last two days he woke up to tell us 'I love you'". It was from the darkest hour ("It was 11.55 on 27 October") that he began to look at the sky even regardless of the mathematical models. «Matteo passed away exactly one year after the death of my grandfather, my wife's father. They were very close, and when I think about it I remember an episode that scared me at the time..."

What happened?

«Last summer, during hospitalization in semi-intensive care in Bologna, he woke up speaking Sicilian. I asked him: “Why are you talking like that?”. Because I'm chatting with grandfather, he replied. The grandfather was Sicilian from Catania».

How did he explain it?

«I told myself that maybe it was the effects of the anesthesia... Then, thinking about it, doubts arise. Doubts about something science can't explain."

Is that why you imagine him in heaven?

"Yes. Those who have dreamed of it say that they see it with their grandfather. I've never dreamed of it. Only once, half asleep, did I think I saw him: his eyes wide open, smiling, he said "Cuckoo". It was a game he played as a child. The last time, when he was in intensive care, shortly before his death. He told me that out of the corner of his eye he saw a little blonde girl, there in the room…».

Was the baby there?

“Yes, she was a little patient staying with her parents. “Dad,” she said, “please make her laugh. Go and make her cuckoo, you'll see that she laughs". He died in my arms."

Could it have been different?

“As a parent, I would say yes. But my answer would not do justice to those who, like Dr. Roberto Tumbarello and Dr. Monica Urru of Brotzu's pediatric cardiology, did so much to save his life, even by fighting with his bare hands. The truth is that it is an unanswered question.

Why is he talking about doctors fighting with bare hands?

«Because this is the condition of those who, even with great professionalism and passion, work in a system such as the public health service that leaks everywhere. And what's more, it is angering to think that, where there were excellences, such as Brotzu's pediatric cardiac surgery which later became pediatric cardiology, that same system ended up squandering a fortune».

Is it the department that has always followed your son, even as an adult?

«Yes, patients with congenital heart disease are followed up for life by pediatric cardiologists. Matteo's malformation was a transposition of the great vessels, basically his heart worked in the opposite way of the anatomy of a normal organ. He was born in Brotzu on 23 October 1991 at 4.33 pm. Twelve hours later he was already under the knife."

Then a department at the apex of operations even in the operating room.

«Cagliari was an excellence of pediatric cardiac surgery much desired by Professor Valentino Martelli. At that time, moreover, an agreement was in progress with the "Jacques Cartier" hospital in Paris and professor Yves Lecompte, a luminary, periodically arrived at the Brotzu».

Matteo was operated on again?

«Yes, still in Cagliari, he wasn't even three months old. In 1996 another operation in Paris, and Brotzu's pediatric cardiac surgery was already losing its first pieces. On his return he was always followed to the Brotzu by Dr. Tumbarello. I've known him for 31 years, when Matteo was born he was a beginner. A doctor that we Sardinians should keep close to, the Gigi Riva of pediatric cardiology. He had foreseen that within the third decade of life, Matteo had to be transplanted in any case».

When did you get the first signs?

«At the age of 20, 21 there were the first episodes of tachycardia and for this reason he left the University, Faculty of Letters and Philosophy. In February 2015 the first long hospitalization at Brotzu, a subcutaneous defibrillator was implanted. In May he was already in Bologna for the first cardiac catheterization. In January 2018, Matteo entered the transplant list».

How do we get to October 2022?

«He suffered from episodes of tachycardia but lived his life as a boy: work in the Ctr onlus cooperative; love for Emma, his girlfriend; swimming in the sea at four in the morning, evening outings. He went to Bologna only for cardiac catheterization, a 20-day periodic hospitalization for screening and tests. Everything crashed with Covid ».

Stories.

“All the leaks in health care have emerged. Matteo, with tachycardia, also waited 15 hours in the emergency room. Twelve hours, many more times. In 2021 from Bologna they were pressing for him to move, even Tumbarello tried to convince him, until it was decided that he would be there in October 1922. My son was always and in any case under control, until in August, last year, the situation got worse. From Brotzu they activated the protocol for the emergency transfer to Bologna, but the medical flight was scheduled with the helicopter instead of with the Air Force Falcon. It took off four days later due to problems with turbulence at altitude».

Matteo didn't make it, other guys did...

«A month ago I received wonderful news: the heart had arrived for Maria, an eight-year-old girl. Today he is fine, he is out of the hospital but since he is still under observation he is staying with his parents in an apartment in the Polo del Cuore, a residence close to the hospital available to families ».

They are bonds that do not break...

“That's right. We feel like parents, and occasionally I also hear from Simone, a boy from Genoa who had just had a transplant during my son's last hospitalization. He did the exercises and said to him: "Come on, we are strong". Eventually you become a family, regardless of how the adventure went. Matteo's death cannot, must not be the Berlin Wall between us and the transplanted boys. It's life that always wins."

Piera Serusi