[ad_1]
He receives me on a warm day in early November at his home. Cats are sleeping on the couch, the television is on on the sports news – “you see, I stay informed,” he jokes – scattered around the room are his daughter’s games. I go into his newspaper, which today is again squeezed between endless shifts at the hospital. We chatted for an hour, sitting at the ends of a long table, with the French door open and the mask on.
Stefano Santoro he is one of the rescuers at the Parini Hospital in Aosta who last spring gave me an idea of the health emergency he experienced on the front line, in the resuscitation room. Six months later, he accepts the editorial proposal to take up that story. Doubts are not lacking, I perceive them, without him explaining them explicitly and directly. The weather has changed, not just the weather.
“When we spoke in April, I said not to collect statues, to tear them down the next day. Maybe the songs and the people clapping were too much, but now we run the risk of exaggerating on the other side. I did not like to be praised then and I do not like to be denigrated now by those who think that emergency services are empty or ambulances are empty to scare people.
The virus is not an invention, it exists and it kills, and Stefano is a witness to it. “People are dying from the coronavirus, why? the coronavirus in some of its forms and in some patients it is lethal. If the person did not have this virus, they would not have died. Did you have other pathologies? Yes, but with these pathologies, before the coronavirus, the person was alive and led a more or less normal existence, while with the virus everything collapses. Covid-19 does not ask for an identity card, but it is obvious that the healthy 20-year-old has more resources to react while the elderly, already weak, have less ”.
The second wave did not surprise Stefano and his colleagues. “History teaches us.” The resuscitation room, like others, had to be reorganized. “The first wave seemed like a tsunami to us, we were overwhelmed. This time it is different, we have more the perception that it is a long tide, we are ready for a marathon, a difficult Tor des Géants lungo e. We see the most serious patients and they are always the same, the virus is always aggressive and if it has the possibility it creates damage. However, our attitude has changed, because in recent months the world has been working on research and an international comparison has been made to find the best strategies to combat this virus. Progress has been made ”.
It is not only the virus that has not mutated as well the feelings of health professionals In front of patients, away from their loved ones, whose anguish and suffering are entrusted to video calls, they are always the same.
“It is difficult to make callus. Unfortunately, the regret of not being able to speak, looking the families in the eye and seeing these people alone in the hospital facing this disease, without the proximity of their loved ones has returned ”. Stefano defines it as “disgust”, but in reality it is something much deeper than in recent months marked it.
“I spent the last five months, before this second wave, as a normal person, with my family, going to work and doing the recreational activities that I like, starting from scratch and trying to put the pieces back together. I had to work a lot because the damage was emotionally important. Helping me was the opportunity to meet, talk, and spend time with families and patients who had been admitted to my neighborhood. Seeing these people together with their children and grandchildren made me touch some of the victories we have achieved in resuscitation. It was therapeutic. “
After treating some injuries, his head is now back to the hard work that awaits him in the room every day. “Right now there is no room for anything but our patients.”
