Thus the historic public service journalist, long a war correspondent in the former Yugoslavia, lashes out against the Rai managers, expressing all his disdain for the treatment meted out to him after the discovery of his illness
“When I got sick I asked for my service record, with the list of missions, to support the diagnosis. I sent at least 10 emails, from the CEO to the head of personnel. No reply. With some I had coffee every morning. I was a manager like them, interim director of Raitre. I wrote them messages on my cell phone calling them by name: ‘I have a terminal illness.’ They ignored me. Repugnant, they should be ashamed. Moreover the building on Viale Mazzini is full of asbestos. Whisper, they advise you against hanging paintings on the wallor”. As Franco Di Mare, 68 years old, historic public service journalist, long-time war correspondent in the former Yugoslavia, lashes out against the Rai managers, expressing all his disdain for the treatment meted out to him after the discovery of his illness. He does so in a long interview with Corriere della Serain which he announces, in fact, that he has contracted a mesotheliomaa form of cancer linked to asbestos.
The outburst against Rai
“Now I understand that there may be trade union and legal reasons. But I asked Rai for my service record, which is my right, that is, I asked Rai ‘can you please give me the list of places I have been?’ Because then I can try to ask the trade associations what can be done.’ They’re all gone“, then added the journalist speaking live on Sunday evening ‘What’s the weather like‘ Of Fabio Fazio on the Nine to present his book ‘The words to say it’. “The whole of Rai, all the management groups. I’m not talking about the current ones, but about the previous ones – underlined Di Mare – if I can come to understand that there may be legal or trade union reasons, what I understand least is the absence on a human level. These people to whom I spoke on a first-name basis have disappeared, they denied themselves on the phone as if I were a beggar. I faced with such an attitude I find only one adjective: it is repugnant“.
The discovery of the tumor
To Corriere, Di Mare told how he discovered the tumor: “I was sitting here on this sofa, watching a stupid program on TV. A terrible pain exploded between my shoulder blades, a stab wound. I thought it was intercostal pain. Instead andra collapse of the pleura, a pneumothorax. I thought: it’s nothing, it will pass. I changed position, I seemed to feel her less. I slept on it, but I couldn’t breathe. I thought I had Covid, but the tests came back negative. After 20 days like this, I decided to have some checks done at the Gemelli Polyclinic.” There “they subjected me to stress tests. After one I passed out. Rushing to the x-ray room for an x-ray. In place of the right lung there was nothingness. It had collapsed along with the pleura, the film that surrounds it. Half of his ribcage was empty. They tried to pump air to lift him up, but it wasn’t enough. They reattached it with some sort of stapler. But first they did a biopsy of the tissue. And finally the diagnosis that leaves me with no escape. I was sitting in front of his desk: ‘Houston, we have a problem,’ the professor told me. ‘Francesco, I don’t know how to tell you. Right now I would really like to be the animator of a village and not a doctor. You have mesothelioma. Aggressive’. ‘How much?’ ‘High grade’. I knew well what it was. I leaned forward, silent, with my hands on my head.” And again: “The disease was contained in the pleura, apart from two small points where it was perforated. And from there, damn it, the tumor came out“.
The illness
“I have little left to live, how long I don’t know. But I don’t give up. I trust in the research”, continues Di Mare to the Corriere. “Dehulling 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.” That’s why now he lives attached to an oxygen machine: “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. It’s an oxygen diffuser, he is now my lung. Before he only helped me at night. For about ten days, however, I can no longer switch off. I’m tied like astronauts.”
