Angela Finocchiaro and breast cancer: “We must drive it out of the heart”

2023-05-23 19:16:08

“In 2010 I had breast cancer surgery. I was particularly attentive to prevention, I had checkups every year. For me it was better to have had the opportunity to operate immediately, because I can’t let my anxiety boil over. It was really before Christmas, within a few days I entered the operating room. The moment one intervenes, one does things, one acts, I go like a tractor, I have to solve. The aftermath, however, is more subtle, because” the tumor “affects an important, very important part of our body. And then it becomes more insidious in accepting oneself. We must face it in a way that does not lurk somewhere the fact of looking at ourselves and thinking that somehow we have a suffered an impairment. An impairment which, I insist, is more precisely something that subtly remains in our minds, in our hearts”. When the 67-year-old actress Angela Finocchiaro was confronted with the experience of her illness, a sentence by oncologist Umberto Veronesi rang in her mind: “It is more difficult to drive cancer out of women’s minds” than from their body.

Think again today, on the sidelines of IEO day for women, an event dedicated by the European Institute of Oncology to those who have experienced or are experiencing breast cancer, which has attracted over a thousand patients from all over to the Manzoni Theater in Milan the country. With these women, Finocchiaro explains to time.news Salute, “I wanted to share this thought of Veronesi, this phrase that resonated in my mind a lot”. In 2010, he goes back to his story, “with the ultrasound the doctors noticed something that instead, in that case, the mammography did not read. In my experience, therefore, they are very important tests, they are not particularly invasive and I, for example, when I was not old enough to have a mammogram, I had my ultrasound every year.” It was useful to set off “an alarm bell”.

And “the moment there was an alarm bell I intervened – continues Finocchiaro – In some way I caught it right at the very beginning” the tumor. “After the operation, I started going around the ‘seven churches’, because there were different evaluations, it was a very small tumor and it was a question of understanding what therapies to do. In the end I had radiotherapy and I took the drugs , complete protocol. Perhaps today it would already be different, I think some treatments have already changed”, he reflects.

At the time Finocchiaro was 55 years old, her family was close to her. “I shared that period right away with my husband Daniele, my two children. How did they react? They ignored it, probably because there’s always this thing that I’m particularly very active, apparently. So – cooked and eaten – I’m back home, we celebrated Christmas, and period. They were faced with a person who continued to lead his life normally”. The theater itself helped her in those moments, she says. “Now I tend to forget certain things, however at the time I also did theatrical performances and this means a lot. The fact that I have made my mind inhabit by other things, since I’m obsessive, certainly helped me a lot”. “Otherwise I would have been around this thought. Luckily I managed to reconcile my daily life and the therapies”.

Accepting oneself, ‘evicting’ the tumor from mind and heart. “That’s where everyone has to find a way out of it, because the fantastic thing is that this type of tumor can be resolved by 90% or more,” says Finocchiaro. The invitation is not to be paralyzed by fear. “Lately I had catastrophic news from a friend who didn’t make it. She didn’t want to intervene, fear overwhelmed her. This must not happen”, he exhorts, also inviting us to be confident in the possibilities offered by the medicine. Even if there are always questions. “The thing that intrigues me is why. Why so many – asks the actress – why has the age decreased, why us, at the breast, why? I’d really like to know”.