BOLOGNA – Lorenzo “was incredibly sunny: he played basketball, played the drums, was a scout, did everything. For him this is really a bad moment, he has a lot of pain, he lives all day with this thought. Help me distract him, write him letters, tell him about the world out there, open windows for him. ” The appeal comes from Francesca Ferrithe mother of Lorenzo Bastelli: lives in Castel San Pietro Terme with his family, is about to turn 14 (his birthday is November 10), is enrolled in the first scientific high school, branch of Malpighi in Bologna, but cannot go to school due to the serious consequences of the recurrence of Ewing’s sarcoma that affected him. Lorenzo is alone, he has somewhat lost sight of his friends, “who are going their own way, as it should be”, and he does not yet know his new classmates well, because he cannot attend. Actually Lorenzo has been following remote school for years. From that diagnosis arrived at the beginning of 2019: “At the beginning they gave us 30% survival. But we can’t eradicate this tumor”.
Francesca’s words flow over the phone, while the memories of the happy and carefree Lorenzo mingle with a daily life – which has now lasted for almost four years – which is made up of deep pain, physical and psychological. Which is made up of loneliness, sometimes necessary for the treatments that are being faced, sometimes a consequence of the pain itself. In that solitude, Francesca admits, “the pain is amplified, because Lorenzo cannot think of anything else. When you are with pain, you live it fully, the anxious state amplifies it more”. And so to distract him, to keep him busy with something that gives him life, happiness, hope even when reality does not seem to grant it, Francesca decided to launch an appeal – relaunched by Agito, the Bone Cancer Parents Association – asking to write to her son “a letter as they used to in the old days (he loves to receive letters, he keeps them all aside and reads them often). I would love for him to have the opportunity to interact with as many people as possible. Not only those who already know him but even those who can tell him something about what he does, about what happens outside “. He words, of course, but also “a drawing, a photograph of an animal … They could lighten his thoughts”.
Someone, in order not to wait for the physiological times of the Post Office, has already responded to his appeal with videos of dogs: “He watched them for half an hour from my mobile phone, in that half hour he was distracted and felt the pain less”. A pain that does not go away, which sometimes worsens. Francesca talks about the labor faced by her son, “I don’t like to say that she ‘fights’ against a tumor, let’s say that she has been interacting with Ewing’s sarcoma for 4 years”. Lorenzo was very active, with sports and music. He didn’t hurt. He felt no breathlessness. The first time it happened he was playing basketball, he “he had scored a lot of baskets, he had been very good, then at a certain point he asked to leave the field”. A few visits to the pediatrician reveal nothing suspicious or dangerous, but Lorenzo no longer eats. “Then one night Lorenzo screamed from evil, we ran to Sant’Orsola: they understood immediately, from the slab. He had a mass of 20 cm that pressed on the lung”. All possible treatments follow, between the polyclinic and the Rizzoli institute, “two transplants, four operations, radiotherapy, chemotherapy”, but the recurrence appears, “Lorenzo is strong but we cannot eradicate this tumor, because this is a subtle disease: the diagnoses they arrive late because pain often does not appear immediately “.
Lorenzo has so many dreams that at this moment are closed in a drawer, “he wants to be a pediatric oncologist, and believe me, he’s really good. He wants to be like Doctor Thomas who is his guardian angel at Sant’Orsola”. To open that drawer, and the windows that now prevent Lorenzo from having the life he deserves to an almost 14-year-old, there is a way: to write him letters, “to tell him about the normality that he cannot live”. Those who wish to do so can send their letter to: Lorenzo Bastelli – Via Berlinguer 71 / B – 40024 Castel San Pietro Terme (BO).