WHAT ILLNESSES HAS DONATELLA RETTORE HAD?
What we know about thalassemia and two operations to which Donatella Rettore underwent due to cancer? This afternoon, during the usual Saturday appointment with the stories and insights of “Verissimo”, the 68 year old singer-songwriter and lyricist originally from Castelfranco Veneto (Treviso) for a new heart-to-heart chat with the landlady. And in the long chat between the icon of Italian pop-punk from the 1980s and Silvia Toffanin there will be space not only to retrace the main stages of a very long career but also the Health problems that the Rector had to face during her life.
As we know among his illnesses Donatella Rector has suffered from thalassemia for some time (since the age of 29) and, more recently, she had to deal with breast cancer from which she recovered: what made her fight more difficult, moreover in the midst of the Covid19 pandemic, was precisely the blood disease, also known as Mediterranean anemia, caused by an inherited genetic defect and which in fact compromises the production of some proteins that make up hemoglobin (responsible for the transport of oxygen in the various tissues); pathology can however manifest with symptoms even very serious or mild, or even asymptomatic. “Blood transfusions are exhausting and not easy to bear, but when I finish them little by little I start to feel better” the artist had once told the weekly ‘DiPiù’.
DONATELLA RECTORE: “DISEASE? I AM PART OF THE FRAGILE CATEGORY”
“I have a family history of it (…) Basically, this disease is something that my immune defenses are missing. This is how I experienced the Covid period and of this virus with terror, because I’m one of those who will stay if I catch it. I am part of the fragile category” he had told Toffanin in a previous interview in the living room of “Verissimo”. And, as mentioned, it was precisely in the middle of the lockdown that the Rector was diagnosed with a tumor during a routine check-up. Underwent surgery at the IOV, the Veneto Oncology Institute, the Rector had spoken on her social networks of “just one more thunder” in the midst of what was a storm (i.e. the previous health problems and the contingent situation). “At the IOV I found professionals of great competence and love for human beings” the artist said, admitting that she was saved in the middle of the pandemic.
HOW DID DONATELLA RECTOR DISCOVER THESE DISEASES?
“Now exactly two years have passed, two very long but also beautiful years. I was calm, I underwent periodic check-ups, but that time my gynecologist, examining me, told me: ‘I don’t like the little stone you have here’. I had a referral for an ultrasound and a mammogram, but instead they immediately performed a needle aspiration: within a few days I was hospitalized and underwent surgery. I had a grain of rice, small but very wild and bad”: however, not having underestimated the issue and having immediately undergone the operation, Donatella Rettore passed the tumor test.
Today the singer-songwriter has changed her lifestyle and on more than one occasion has had the opportunity to make an appeal to all the people fighting against these pathologies: “To the women and men who are facing a history of cancer I say that we must continue to believe in it, bring out all the strength you have in your body. I tell everyone that it is essential to do prevention: it is often a fight against time and there is no need to have hesitations or doubts. If we procrastinate, all we do is worsen the situation”.
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