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“Per aspera ad astra”, my fight against cancer

by admin

(text collected by Emilio Cozzi)

I have a tumor. There is little to go around it: it is November 28, 2020 and the Tac speaks clearly, like a sentence. There is something wrong with my central nervous system.

It is curious if nothing else: for more than twenty years I have been an astronaut. My health has been meticulously monitored, scanned, studied by teams of experts at the pace of tests, examinations, screening with maniacal precision and also increasing gradually. The last year, the pandemic, with everything that came with it, kept me from undergo periodic visits. Just when they would have been most appropriate. Or at least when they could have found an anomaly. But life goes like this. You cannot fool yourself that you decide everything that happens to you. And for sure, trust me, I would have gladly avoided hearing that medical sentence read it.

From that day on, my life, already turned upside down like everyone’s due to a global emergency, has undergone a further revolution. Radical, I would say.

Stop at conferences. Stop my public speeches live and via media. Stop the many projects in which I was lucky enough to be involved. On the contrary, stop at the very possibility of designing something that they weren’t the interminable medical assessment procedures and, immediately after, the treatment cycles. Not infrequently (we continue not to turn around too much) exhausting.

It’s been 10 months since then and I can’t remember how many days I spent outside the hospitals. But now, thanks to the health care of many doctors and nurses, and the support of relatives and friends, the situation seems to be under control. “The failure seems to have been resolved “, we would have said in Space; I see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel getting bigger and bigger!

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The real question, returning to the metaphor of my beloved Space, is that a tumor cannot be seen as a malfunction, like an exceptional event. Its diffusion and the extreme variety of cases would suggest, on the contrary, that we should do everything except consider extraordinary events like mine or those of many, many others. This is why I decided, which is not very much in tune with a character that forces me to consider my personal stories uninteresting, to communicate how I am.

There is one more thing: one of the most famous mottos of the Space is per aspera ad astra. It might seem trivial, but it perfectly summarizes an essential awareness: that of those who, in order to reach the stars, know that it will be necessary to face difficulties. Challenges that in space, as in life, can scare us, seem gigantic, can annihilate our willpower. And, sometimes, too many times, put a strain on our health, mental and physical.

But he is alone facing difficulties to the point of overcoming them that we can aim high. No great results can be achieved without a hefty dose of willpower. And therefore, per aspera ad astra!

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