«I was sitting in front of his desk. “Houston, we have a problem,” the professor told me. “Francesco, I don’t know how to tell you. Right now I would really like to be the animator of a village and not a doctor. You have mesothelioma. Aggressive”. “How much?” “High degree”.
He understood immediately.
«I knew well what it was. I leaned forward, silent, with my hands on my head. And the teacher got pissed. “Hey! And what is it now? She reacts, we fight, you’ll see that we can do it”». Franco Di Mare, 68 years old, former war correspondent and TV presenter, has to control his breathing when he speaks. «I have a tumor that leaves no way out. I have little left to live, how long I don’t know. But I don’t give up. I trust in research.” Next to him is a large tank on wheels, which follows him wherever he goes. He has a transparent tube in his nose. «He is an oxygen diffuser, he is now my lung. Before he only helped me at night. For about ten days, however, I can no longer switch off. I’m tied like astronauts. If you look closely he resembles R2-D2, the little robot from Star Wars.” The little dog Lili jumps around him.
He calls him by name, his enemy.
«When I was little, the voice in the family was lowered: “That person has a bad illness”. As if, by naming it, the monster would enter your house. I, on the other hand, am direct. I have cancer. Today we treat ourselves and often recover. Not from this one. He doesn’t go away, at most you can slow him down, but he stays there and he’s one of the baddest.”
“Why to me?”. She found the answer.
«Because I spent a long time in the Balkans, among depleted uranium bullets, hyper-fast, hyper-destructive, capable of knocking down a building. Each explosion released infinite particles of asbestos into the air. One was enough. Six thousand times lighter than a hair. Maybe I met her in Sarajevo, in July 1992, my first mission. Or the last one, in 2000, who knows. I couldn’t know it, but I had breathed death. The incubation period can last up to 30 years. Here we are”.
He wrote a book about it that comes out tomorrow: «Le parole per lo dirlo» (Sem, Feltrinelli).
«To tell the wars outside of me and the one inside me. A small existential dictionary. Without pity. It’s my will.”
An ordinary afternoon three years ago.
«I was sitting here on this sofa, watching a stupid program on TV. A terrible pain exploded between my shoulder blades, a stab wound. I thought it was intercostal pain. Instead it was a collapse of the pleura, a pneumothorax. I thought: it’s nothing, it will pass. I changed position, I seemed to feel her less. I slept on it, but I couldn’t breathe. I thought I had Covid, but the tests came back negative. After 20 days like this, I decided to do some checks at the Gemelli Polyclinic.”
And there?
«They subjected me to stress tests. After one I passed out. Rushing to the x-ray room for an x-ray. In place of the right lung there was nothingness. It had collapsed along with the pleura, the film that surrounds it. Half of his ribcage was empty. They tried to pump air to lift him up, but it wasn’t enough. They reattached it with some sort of stapler. But first they did a biopsy of the tissue. And finally the diagnosis that leaves me with no escape.”
Mesothelioma, indeed.
«The disease was contained in the pleura, apart from two small points where it was perforated. And from there, damn it, the tumor came out. Decortication gave me two years of life. But then, six months ago, there was a recurrence. She presented herself the same way. A very sharp pang. This time to the left. I breathe with a third of my lung capacity.”
He can no longer live without this machine.
«Until twenty days ago I went out to do the shopping. Two steps. At most I kept the portable respirator with me, which weighs 15 kilos. But it lasts an hour and you have to hope it doesn’t crash. It happened one night, I had a hard time. Now I no longer have autonomy. I was a very active man. Look, I’m wearing slippers because my feet are so swollen that my shoes don’t fit, I who, as a good Neapolitan, was always elegant.”
He writes that he almost went looking for this evil.
«Without meaning to, because I was completely unaware of the danger, under that always dusty gray Balkan sky. Breathing the night air, while I slept on cots stuck between the tracks of tanks or in gutted factories. But it was my job.”
War correspondent.
«The first time that the operator Antonio Fabiani and I left for Sarajevo, we only had a microphone, camera, cassettes and batteries. As soon as they got off the Hercules C-130 he convinced a French colleague to sell him a bulletproof vest for 200 dollars. We took turns wearing it. We played it off.”
The worst moment of the last three years.
«Having to tell those you love that the disease is curable but not solvable. You can extend the day’s deadline, not procrastinate it endlessly. The time we have is precious, you only realize it when you are leaving. And decide not to waste even a moment again.”
He writes: «We sick people have deeper and lighter looks than you healthy people».
«Because we look at others with different, more forgiving, understanding eyes».
«Whoever is sick falls in love with the world».
«In illness, time slows down, it imposes its own rhythm, you are more attentive, you see things that you previously overlooked. Today I like myself much more. And I get angry. Couldn’t I have been like this before? Should I have waited until I got sick?
Do you have any regrets?
“No, I was lucky enough to do the job I dreamed of, to live a hundred lives.”
He failed to…
«To visit Antarctica. To learn to play the piano like Stefano Bollani. And to see the Fiji Islands. I liked diving, now I can’t breathe, what a paradox.”
Do you hate your tumor?
“No. I understand that it is an aspect of me, one of many. Evil is part of nature. But I am not my illness.”
He is disdained by the Rai top management.
«When I got sick I asked for my service record, with the list of missions, to support the diagnosis. I sent at least 10 emails, from the CEO to the head of personnel. No reply”.
Silence.
«With some I had coffee every morning. I was a manager like them, interim director of Raitre. I texted them on my cell phone, calling them by name: “I have a terminal illness.” They ignored me. Disgusting, they should be ashamed. Furthermore, the building on Viale Mazzini is full of asbestos. In a whisper, they advise you against hanging paintings on the wall.”
Savor the memories.
«Mama Maria who prepared aubergine parmigiana. She lined them up on the pan. And I, kneeling on the chair, poured the sauce with a ladle. I can still smell that scent now.”
Despite it all.
«I have a beautiful life, you know? I’m with the people I love. My dear sisters. I am protected and looked after, I feel like a little sultan. We always fixate on our first love – mine, in high school, was a dancer at San Carlo – but the most important is the last one, which accompanies you in the final steps. For me it’s Giulia. We have been together for eight years. There is more than 30 differences between us, before it was less noticeable.” The beautiful brunette girl approaches: «Love, do you feel cold?».
And he has many friends around him.
“We love each other. They come for dinner. The other evening I cooked linguine in bread sauce with baby squid. I’m very hungry, with all the cortisone I take. The oncologists allowed me a glass of red wine in the evening.”
Do you look at the calendar?
«No, I’ll be 69 on July 28, but I don’t know if I’ll get there. Maybe yes. I’m calm, I’m not afraid. The idea of suffering scares me, but I have gone to a dozen funerals of colleagues younger than me. And I’m miraculously alive. During a gang shootout in Albania, a bullet passed through the back of my neck. I didn’t die because I bent down to get a battery in my bag. I consider myself a lucky man.”
April 28, 2024
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