Photographs

Italian

I have a bit of free time... I close my eyes and open the memories, 
Leafing through my photographs...

In this one I was collapsed on the bathroom floor after fainting...
And without any idea of what would take place in the succeeding months...

Here is the pale face of the doctor after she saw the first blood test results...

Now, there I am on the bed, with my wife next to it. She have just told me about the leukemia and the massive lung infection... What a shock!

The next one... let's see... This was at night and I was breathing as the machine forced me to exhale... lung gymnastics. What a terrible time...

This is my wife, sleeping on the chair next to my bed.
My eyes were open and observing her because I could not sleep.

Oh yes, here is Toni, my nurse friend, who opened the door because he heard laughing as he walked past the room.
Because on the TV there was a program which made me roar with laughter. Ah Ha!

There are more too... Here is Doctor Forghieri, glowing and pushing the door open to shout: "Great news! Your brother's bone marrow is compatible!"... Eh, Forghieri... usually so composed...

Here... here are two nurses, Betta and Anna Maria, who were washing me.
I was too weak even to move.

Leonardo is this one, the mythical Doctor Ferrara. He is standing at the entrance of the room and saying: "Hi Alfie! I heard that you're making progress. I'll say hello from here because I have a cold...
Go! Give it your all!" ...
We still hear from each other, Leo and I...

Ferruccio, another nurse, is in this photo.
It was the middle of the night and he arrived to see if everything was ok, not  because he was called. He noticed the light turned on, filtering under the door of my room... What a fantastic person!

Then... ah yes... this is Doctor Fantuzzi, a kind and  lovely woman.
Here, she was withdrawing bone marrow, an aspiration of bone marrow blood from my back...
I never suffered with her, as I often did with others...

Here is Carla, a bright and sunny soul... She and my wife had long long chats together... Nurses help everyone, both patients and their families...

Ilaria is in this photo. She is steadfastness personified. Endless work shifts, one after another, and she was always present with a disarming smile.

My brother is the person in this photo. He came to visit me at 6 in the mornings. To be there, he got up at 5, showered, and raced to the hospital...
It was Winter time and often there was snow.

My sister is in the next photo. Along with my brother, she passed incredible hours in order to see me. When she wanted to drive the new car in the fog there were many disagreements...
Once she brought me a life size photograph of my daughters.
I missed them so much!

Then there is Maria, the most precise nurse who ever existed. She understands the strangest and most difficult procedures, and criticizes colleagues if they make a tiny mistake. In this photo, she was medicating my PICC, that tube inserted in my right arm and reaching above my collarbone... For the infusions and the drawing of blood.

Chiara, in the next photo, is a psychologist. We spoke a lot, Chiara and I (I had nothing else to do!)... Before leaving, she always shook my hand, which was a small break in the rules, but even a brief human contact was so important to me...

This photo shows me immobile on the bed, and Doctor Narni, who was talking to me... I was paralyzed with illness and pain, and he incited me to react. Take little steps, he said... My steps were, indeed very small...

Here we are: my wife, myself and Giovanna, one of the most enjoyable nurses... In fact, in this picture we were laughing... She always told us about her daughter and found a universal lesson behind everything... Giovanna brought the bottles for the therapy, but she always added a good injection of optimism...

Next, there are my parents... My Mother was seated and my Father was standing, as always. He had his hands wrapped around the tubes at the foot of the bed, almost as though he wanted to shake me.
Seeing me in this condition made them suffer... they tried not to let me see, but they failed...
And I wanted to appear less in pain, but I couldn't do that either...

This photo shows me wrapped in covers on a rolling bed, being hauled along the underground corridor by the orderlies from patient transport...
They were taking me for still another radiology exam or TAC... It was freezing that day!

Yes, here is a good one... It is of the doctors standing at the foot of my bed during their daily controls. In front there was my friend Doctor Monica Morselli with clear light eyes and a luminous smile. I knew her when I was young and rediscovered her here. Professor Luppi was the one with rebellious hair and a dark beard, a real leader. Here Doctor Forghieri, Doctor Fantuzzi, and a few pratictioners...
They were talking together in lowered voices and then one was explaining the blood values, the therapy, measures and counter measures...
I didn't always understand what they said, eh eh...

Ah! This is my first day outside, after months in the hospital... It was for the First Communion of my daughters... After the ceremony, all the family gathered around a table in the parish hall... I had that sort of fuzz instead of hair on my head, and was so thin and weak...

This photograph shows me in the Thoracic Surgery Ward. This was during the last TAC, just before I went home for Easter. It showed dark shadows on my lungs. Doctor Potenza, an excellent doctor but a bit fussy, joined with Doctor Paolini to advise me that after those few days at home I'd have a lung biopsy (total anesthesia, three holes in my rib cage, one lung halted, taking a tissue sample, restarting the lung, surtures...). But... just like in a film... at the last minute it was Doctor Potenza who insisted on one more TAC before the surgery, to confirm the situation.
To summarize... it was a false alarm... Tears fell to free the emotions. Here I was on the phone with my brother. At the other end of the line he was weeping inside his shop...

This one, instead, shows Gino. I was put into a room with him. He was a 60 year old cancer patient, on loan to hematology. His memory was foggy and he repeated the same things over and over. Gino complained a lot, poor guy, about the terrible pains in his back...

Then, look here, this was my new room mate, Alberto. We immediately became friends. The dignified gentleman next to him is his father, who was very kind to me. On Sundays he arrived with a serving dish full of the best food from a restaurant outside the hospital. I'll never forget the first time he brought us bowls of fantastic tortellini in broth!

This picture is of me in the Operating Room. They were implanting the Hickman; a catheter in a central vein... A tube which entered a major vein by passing through my chest. It was inserted for the infusions, before and after the transplant. That was my first time in the Operating Room...

My wife and I, in this photo, were placing clothes and objects inside sterile bags... Before my entry into the Transplant Unit everything had to be cleaned and disinfected ...

In this scene I am immobilized, attached to that sort of iron and plastic perch in radiology. Doctor Bertoni and Doctor Pratissoli, those two figures manipulating the plexiglass panels, needed to be sure that I could not make any movement at all during the therapy...
Incredibly, there was a relaxed joking atmosphere in that room, despite the risk and delicacy of the procedure...

Sophie was a wonderfully sweet nurse of French origins. Here, she was attaching me to my new pole, with three pumps for the infusions... Such a tangle of tubes and junctions that entered in my body... At first I was anxious, but then I got used to it...
The gray pump... eh, that one. It gave off a loud mechanical tick tick tick that punctuated my days, and above all the nights...

Now there is a photo of Rossella, the hurricane of the Ward. When she said Hello to the patient in the room next to mine, I replied. Her voice was that loud! I can still hear her words "Goooood Morning Young Maaaan!"
In this image, Rossella was explaining that every time I went to the bathroom, I needed to wear mono-use vinyl gloves, measure the quantity of urine before flushing, remove and throw away the gloves, wash my hands then write the number on a paper document... They gave me so many liquids that I went to the bathroom every 40 minutes day and night... A disaster!

Matteo is in this one. He's the nurse with blue eyes who brought me the bone marrow blood donated by my brother. This photo shows him hanging the bag on the pole... To give the proper symbolic weight to the moment he solemnly pronounced: "Turn off the television and put on some music that you enjoy..."
My choice was the album "Long Road out of Eden" by the Eagles...

The tall young man here is Alessandro, another nurse. I'll never forget his enormous patience and availability. I was tortured by a devastating mucositis and a hammering backache and did not know where to turn... But every night he brought me a bit of hot tea, then stopped to chat about music and other easy subjects, so I was distracted...

Here, instead, is the cleaning lady. I never knew here name, but found out that she had a son who drove her crazy! She passed by to clean and disinfect twice a day. Each time she asked how I was feeling and how my children were. This woman, too, had an important role in my voyage... In her own way she was a parenthesis of normality in the middle of that long nightmare...

Then Pietro... always smiling and in good spirits... And Vincenzo, precise and punctual, and extremely polite. He always said "excuse me" and asked permission to enter... and to leave!

Here I was closing the door after gathering all my possessions on a cart.
I was leaving the Transplant Unit... It was quiet and I was free from the pole, perhaps feeling a bit melancholy... But I do not miss that place...

This is one of my favorite photographs: I was finally at home, standing at the front door, and my adored children had me closed in a long hug. I could not hold back the tears... And become emotional even today...

The next shows my Father and I at the Day Hospital for the Hickman therapy. We spent hours waiting on those wooden seats...

Here is Doctor Pedrazzi, with her wonderful smile, as she did a bone marrow blood aspiration... Fortunately, she has a gentle touch...

And this is Doctor Cuoghi, with her short red hair and her stethoscope always around her neck.

Here are the employees at the reception desk of the Day Hospital: where I registered when arriving for the controls.
They see thousands of patients every day, but this woman, in the photo, calls me by name when she sees me...

Next is Doctor Bresciani, small and yet so grand. A distillation of absolute precision. Perfect.

This gentleman is Doctor Cintori.
He loves vacationing in Switzerland and when I told him that I was born there he wanted to know all the details. With him, I am re-doing all my vaccinations, right from the beginning. At each appointment he gives me two injections in my shoulders.

This is Valeria, Doctor Coluccio... Here she was smiling in her doctors jacket. She is made for this work because she knows how to balance professionality and humanity. With her I always feel comfortable, and her periodic medical visits seem more like meetings of old friends...

Lisa, Doctor Galli, is in this one. She's in charge of the Psychological Services at the AIL. Here, we were in her office, and we were shaking hands.
We had met once before in the Ward... A brief but important meeting. Later, we got back in touch again.
Lisa was the person who suggested that I open a personal blog; and the very next day I created it and posted my first writing. I am so happy that I followed her advice!

These are only some of the photographs, among the many which I hold dear inside me.
For each one of them there is an episode, an anecdote, and the positive memories have surpassed the negative ones.

I hope that all my "travelling companions" preserve their own images.
Their lives after the illness will be richer and fuller.
I hope that they always know that there is a universe in every gesture... And that there are people who dedicate their existence to others with such a strong commitment and such generosity that we can only admire them...