The announcement came live on TV, in connection with Fabio Fazio, on Che Tempo che Fa. «I got mesothelioma, a very bad tumor, linked to the presence of asbestos in the air. It is taken by breathing in parcels of asbestos, without realizing it.” Franco Di Mare, historic Rai correspondent, knows he has a limited horizon: «I have a tumor that leaves no escape. I have little left to live, how long I don’t know. But I don’t give up. I trust in the research”, he will say a few minutes later to Corriere della Sera. At Fazio the journalist shows a «little tube that runs over my face, it is connected to an automatic respirator and allows me to breathe forcedly, but it also allows me to be here to tell stories, to talk to you».
Di Mare will turn 69 on July 28th, he was born in Naples, began his journalistic career at Unità and has been with Rai since 1991, starting from the foreign editorial office of TG2. In 1995 he took on the role of special correspondent and began to travel the world for investigations and reportages. And it was precisely during one of his services, the one in the Balkans to report on the war that bloodied them at the beginning of the nineties, that his illness was born. «I spent a long time in the Balkans – he tells Corriere – among depleted uranium bullets, hyper-fast, hyper-destructive, capable of knocking down a building. Each explosion released infinite particles of asbestos into the air. One was enough. Six thousand times lighter than a hair. Maybe I met her in Sarajevo, in July 1992, my first mission. Or the last one, in 2000, who knows. I couldn’t know it, but I had breathed death. The incubation period can last up to 30 years. Here we are”.
In short, Di Mare has harbored for decades the enemy that is now killing him and which he considers, like many cancer patients, a part of himself, because “evil is part of nature, but I am not my illness”. He appears resigned but also eager to fight as much as possible to gain as much time as he can. He confesses that the most difficult thing is communicating the illness to loved ones. «I had a beautiful life – he tells Fazio -. The memories I have are memories full of life. I don’t want to get stuck around the idea of death. I want to connect to the idea that there is life. What I’m so sorry about is only finding this out now. It’s not too late yet.”
Among the things that pain Mare, as well as his fate and the difficulties in moving, given that he is tied to a respirator which makes up for the fact that he can count on a third of his lung capacity, but limits his movements a lot, there is the behavior of your company. «When I got sick – he tells Corriere della Sera – I asked for my service record, with the list of missions, to support the diagnosis. I sent at least ten emails, from the CEO to the head of personnel. No reply”. Yet, he continues, «with some I had coffee every morning. I was a manager like them, interim director of Raitre. I texted them on my cell phone, calling them by name: I have a terminal illness. They ignored me. Repugnant, they should be ashamed.”
Mesothelioma is a neoplasm that originates from the mesothelium, the layer of cells that lines the serous cavities of the body such as the pleura, peritoneum, pericardium.
Over 80 percent of cases are related to exposure to airborne asbestos fibres, with a time latency of 15-45 years, and a time course of one to two years.
