“I have a tumor that leaves no way out. I have little left to live, how long I don’t know. But I don’t give up. I trust in the research”, “I will turn 69 on July 28, but I don’t know if I’ll get there.
Maybe yes. I’m calm, I’m not afraid. The idea of suffering scares me, but I have gone to a dozen funerals of colleagues younger than me. And I’m miraculously alive. During a gang shootout in Albania, a bullet passed through the back of my neck. I didn’t die because I bent down to get a battery in my bag. I consider myself a lucky man.” Thus Franco Di Mare, 68 years old, former war correspondent and TV presenter, in an interview with Corriere della Sera. “I spent a long time in the Balkans, 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”, “I was completely unaware of the danger, under that always dusty gray Balkan sky. Breathing the night air, while I slept on cots stuck between the tracks of tanks or in gutted factories. But it was my job.” He wrote us a book that comes out tomorrow: “The words to say it”… “To tell the wars outside of me and the one inside me. A small existential dictionary. Without pity. It’s my will.” the mesothelioma, he explains, was contained in the pleura “and from there, damn it, the tumor came out. Decortication gave me two years of life. But then, six months ago, there was a recurrence. She presented herself the same way. A very sharp pang. This time to the left. I breathe with a third of my lung capacity. Until twenty days ago I went out to do the shopping. Two steps. At most I kept the portable respirator with me, which weighs 15 kilos. But it lasts an hour and you have to hope it doesn’t crash.
It happened one night, I had a hard time. Now I no longer have autonomy. I was a very active man. Look, I’m wearing slippers because my feet are so swollen that my shoes don’t fit, I who, as a good Neapolitan, was always elegant.” And again: “The disease is curable but not solvable. You can extend the day’s deadline, not procrastinate it endlessly. The time we have is precious, you only realize it when you are leaving. And decide not to waste even a moment anymore” and “those who are sick fall in love with the world”. (29 Apr – red)
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