2023-05-10 15:12:03
The sixth edition of the #alfiancodelcoraggio contest is in full swing. The jury has in fact selected the 10 semi-finalist stories of the literary contest reserved for men and boys to tell their experience next to a patient with cancer. There is time now until 8 June for anyone who wants to help choose the three finalists from whom the winning story will then be elected by the jury, destined to become a short film (it is possible to express one’s preference by reading the stories on the contest sitevoting up to a maximum of three among the ten semi-finalists).
On the occasion of Mother’s Day we offer you one of the finalist writings, which tells what happens when a mother gets sick.
“July 2 is a date I will never forget: those little specks with a blurred outline that they had found on my wife during an ultrasound gave us concern but we would not have imagined everything that would have happened after the result of the biopsy.
We hadn’t slept peacefully for days, we said to ourselves: they will be nodules that will aspire, let’s not think of the worst. In the same hospital, a few days before her, we had been informed that her father had little time left to live and that July 2 we were in a surgery with her petrified in front of the doctor who communicated her diagnosis to us. At that moment I saw that Francesca was no longer listening, I’ve known her for 20 years … she had squeezed her hand tightly saying: “You go ahead and listen”. They were explaining to us that the path would be long, difficult, with hopes but few certainties. Chemotherapy, total mastectomy with axillary dissection, radiotherapy and immunotherapy.
#afiancodelcoraggio: the sixth edition of the literary award dedicated to male caregivers is underway
by Simone Valesini
We wandered lost in that hospital ward where you meet other weak people, with hollow faces and marked by illness; the same hospital that twice gave us the greatest joy with the birth of our children; the same hospital that had given me a second life two years earlier after successfully coping with a brain hemorrhage while she was pregnant with our second child. This time everything was different, hell awaited us.
His thought was how to communicate it to his mother who would soon lose her husband, to our two children aged 6 and 1 and a half years. On July 7th his father died and on July 9th there was the funeral, the same day as the Tac to check for metastases. Hell had begun.
I still remember one evening in the kitchen with our children…Gaia was small and couldn’t understand the situation, but we told Tommy about her mother’s illness. We told him that every time mom went to the hospital they injected her with lots of little soldiers, who shot at these bad cells and they fought. He asked a lot of questions like: “How many cells did the toy soldiers kill you today?”, “But it’s the toy soldiers who punched holes in your arm?”, “Mom, I did my homework by myself, tonight I can cook with dad?”.
Francy’s change was merciless and distressing: her completely bald head, her slender body, her beautiful eyes had become dull and sad, she was no longer her; and I, neither. I often found myself in the middle of the night with my eyes wide open, I stared at Francy who was sleeping next to me, I didn’t recognize her anymore. But I always loved her unconditionally, tears flowed, her physical and mental fatigue was devastating every day, her cancer was taking away so much from us, but I did everything to make her feel like a woman, mother, wife again. Love, our love, that continued and always be alive, is what gave us the strength to go through hell. After 2 years Francy has found her smile again, her hair is growing back, she has incredible strength, every 6 months she checks her, we remain in suspense for a few days and then we hug each other when they tell us the outcome favorable. The road is still long, but it must be faced with trust, courage and patience. And the toy soldiers…they are always there, in Tommy’s toy box, every now and then he takes them out of the box, puts them all in a row and very sweetly tells the story of his mother to little Gaia.
Thanks Francy.”
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