Omar Pedrini he defines his heart as “rogue”, in an outburst of tenderness that does not hide a pinch of bitterness. Because that very heart has been forcing him to for years live with the disease, the same one who called everything in his life into question, leading him to often change his plans with no alternative. The rocker from Brescia, founder of the historic Timoria, returned to talk about it in an interview with Corriere della Sera after the umpteenth “pit stop” – as he usually calls his hospitalizations -, a break that this time lasted a week and from which he will find out whether or not a new operation is necessary, after the six he has already suffered since that fateful 2004.
Omar Pedrini, the first diagnosis of aortic aneurysm
Omar Pedrini’s ordeal began in 2004 with a very special episode. He had spent an almost completely sleepless night, until his partner at the time, Elenoire Casalegno, was no longer able to wake him up: moments of real fear and a worrying, excessive tiredness, to the point that the presenter was forced to load him into the car and take him straight to the hospital. And so a man of 1 meter and 90 suddenly found himself without strength and under the knife, with only the 20% chance of survival according to the doctors, who immediately operated on him.
It all started from there, precisely from that diagnosis of aortic aneurysm that would forever change the life of the rocker from Brescia. Continuous check-ups, periodic hospitalizations (or “pit stops”, as he himself calls them) and behind him many heart surgeries that he has learned to face with a truly enviable mix of tenacity and phlegm. “I underwent six operations with as many total anesthesias – explained to Corriere della Sera -, four of them in the last year and a half. As a multi-operator, my almost bionic body has a thousand clots, adhesions, prostheses, it is not easy terrain for a surgeon”.
Omar Pedrini and the new heart problems
Years of hospitals, doctors, surgeries. Finally, hospitalization at Humanitas Gavezzeni, an avant-garde facility specializing in robotic and minimally invasive cardiac surgery, to “carry out high-level checks and tests” after yet another diagnosis that was anything but positive: “I was discovered a heart fatigue – he said in the interview released immediately after his last hospitalization -. (…) I also have a somewhat hypertrophic heart, larger than normal”.
Problem he discovered after an accident that happened last summer in Liguria: “I was ‘buffered’ while pushing my son Faustino [il suo terzo figlio, avuto dalla compagna Veronica Scalia, ndr] on the stroller. I ended up in the ER of Sanremo: when I told the doctors that I would rather be singing at the Ariston than with them, we started laughing. It was Saturday night and they discharged me. But having had surgery on the aorta, I had some doubts. And so I went to the hospital in Bologna, where I had undergone the operation, to undergo a CAT scan, discovering that the blow from the accident had ripped open my stitches. After the operation to close them, in September, I was diagnosed with heart valve fatigue”.
Omar Pedrini and illness, a hymn to hope and not to give up
When there is health, everything is there, we often hear. And being faced with a diagnosis that condemns you to one life overshadowed by uncertainty it is not at all simple. Omar Pedrini is well aware of this but he never thought of giving up, not even for a moment. His personal battle is an emotional hymn to hope, which is very easy to lose when facing the drama of the disease, of any kind.
That heart that always beat to the rhythm of the guitar has become one sword of Damocles, which he welcomed with zen phlegm without letting himself be overwhelmed: “We all have one: it’s supported by horsehair, mine is just thinner than average. And like me there are those who have an oncological or infectious disease, as seen in Bergamo and Brescia, where the pandemic has wiped out a generation. Definitely the sword of Damocles it leads you to be right with your conscience every time you close your eyes; to behave better in human relationships: you don’t feel like arguing if you have a visit tomorrow for which you pray to God that it goes well. And then, you enjoy the present“.