“Mihajlovic? Today I didn’t just lose a patient, but also a friend”

“I have not only lost a patient, but also a friend”, says Dr. Francesca Bonifazi, the same age as Sinisa Mihajlovic, who followed the Serbian technician’s illness from the second cycle of chemotherapy onwards and was mentioned in the thanks addressed by family members to health workers who accompanied Sinisa in her complex treatments. Director of the Advanced Cellular Therapies program at the Irccs Polyclinic of Sant’Orsola in Bologna, Dr. Bonifazi spoke of Mihajlovic as “a perfect patient, with a great personality and at the same time with the ability to entrust himself totally to doctors. He had a very bad disease, among the most aggressive I’ve ever seen. The message he gave to all of us, his great teaching, is the courage to go forward. The courage not to be afraid to face something you don’t know, to know how to trust, to fight without fear of pain. He suffered a lot, but he did it with great dignity. And we took the courage together, we gave it to each other”.

DIFFICULT WALK

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One of Sinisa’s character aspects that struck her the most was her “will to live. In order to make it, she would have faced any pain, any suffering. She didn’t want to leave her family, which she loved above all else. Football was the his world, of course, but his family was his oxygen”. But Mihajlovic’s disappearance must also serve as a lesson for those who are experiencing similar clinical paths: “I always say that the ugliest disease is the one you face alone. His disease was bad, resistant to all therapies, transplants, but he had a series of affectionate relationships around him for which he was never alone. In the hospital he made himself well liked by everyone, there is not a single person from the doctors to the nurses to the auxiliaries to the technical staff… they wanted him all very well”. Recognizing, then, the central and decisive role that Sinisa’s wife, Arianna, played during the illness.