He will be born in late summer and will be called Star. As the Grandmother that he will never know. She will be the second grandchild of Stella Alaimo Franco Of Treviglio, died on March 30 at age 61 for a lung cancer metastasized and discovered when it was too late. “And yet they told us that if the exact diagnosis had been made in time, even just a few weeks before what actually happened, things could have gone differently.”
The two children, Monica 39 years old and Andrew of 37, they clutch a purple binder where, among a pack of reports and tests, the last, painful months of their mother’s life can be read. Just over three have passed from the first visit to the emergency room in Treviglio, on 17 December, on the day of death. It all began and ended in 100 days. And everything starts from here, even there complaint that the two Franco brothers, assisted by the lawyer Massimo Trabattoni of Milan, have filed hypothesizing the crime of manslaughter against three doctors of theTreviglio Hospitalas well as towards theAsst Bergamo West. They are not resigned to the idea of having lost her mother like this (“she had always been well, never had anything, not even a cough”), after having tried everything even when the situation was already irremediably compromised . But above all, they do not understand how behind a strong pain in one leg there was a serious illness that was not recognized immediately. “And yet it was there, it was there.”
A tumor measuring 5 by 4 centimetresas would emerge a month later, thanks to one Tac. «Mother had never complained of any ailments, but in mid-December she complained of severe pain in one leg – they say -. So we decided to accompany her to the emergency room of the Treviglio hospital.” Mrs. Alaimo was discharged after having performed X-rays in the spinal-lumbar-sacral area, with the diagnosis of low back pain and no day of prognosis. She goes home, but the pain doesn’t stop. They make her cry and for “her who had a very high pain threshold”, as Andrea points out, “it must have been something truly unbearable”. So on January 4th it is Andrea who accompanies her back to the emergency room in Treviglio. The pain is excruciating: «The mother was really sick, and she asked for a painkiller – recalls the son -. Don’t you have one in your bag? She told her a nurse. Well, then you take it.” Referring to the diagnosis made previously, without further diagnostic tests and still with zero days of prognosis, Stella Alaimo is sent home. It is only thanks to the personal knowledge of the children of a doctor who understands the gravity of the situation that, on January 16, the lady is subjected to an MRI, which highlights the «presence of oxyfluent expansive pathological tissue». «In practice – explains Andrea – they were metastasis of a tumor which was then highlighted by a subsequent CT scan, carried out on January 23rd. A 5 by 4 centimeter tumor in the chest with further diffuse nodules.”
It was January 29th when a first oncological visit was carried out atCancer Institute of Milan definitively clarifies the picture: a «Multimetastatic fourth stage adeno lung cancer with peritoneal carcinomatosis». Very harsh terms, words like stabs, but the two brothers still hope when their mother, after various hospital visits, begins a cycle of treatments which, although experimental, could give her some hope. Maybe not about healing, but about acceptance and coexistence with evil, yes. «Everything has revealed itself useless, also because she started to feel terrible. At the end of February – her son recalls – she could no longer get out of bed, but I would have taken her to the top of the world. I was willing to do anything for her. They told me about a specialized center in Tuscany and specialists at Gemelli in Rome. The helicopter to take her for treatment was already ready.”
The situation worsensbut an awareness takes over in the two brothers: «The one that, as we were told by the team that was treating him in Milan, if that type of tumor had been diagnosed in time it could have been cured — they say — and that the delay in the incorrect diagnosis by the Treviglio doctors caused serious consequences, since the disease had advanced irreversibly.” The questions that Andrea and Monica ask themselves are many, but the biggest of all is linked to that first visit to the emergency room: «Why wasn’t the mother subjected to more in-depth tests from the first moment? What pushed us to denounce is the hope that something like this will never happen again. And that no child can lose a parent in this way, as happened to us.”
The strategic management of the Bergamo Ovest Asst, in a note, expresses «its closeness to the family members of Mrs. Stella, who died in Milan on March 30th. The death of a family member is always a painful event and is even more so when it occurs so quickly for a woman in the prime of life. The company and the director of the emergency room they immediately took action, providing maximum availability to the competent authorities and they undertake to implement all useful actions to evaluate what happened”.
