Overcoming illness with love
From Associazione Esposti Amianto, Notizie n. 17, Luglio-Agosto-Settembre 2008, anno 5 nr. 17, pag. 12.
Sadly, in recent months, asbestos laid its claim to the life of a dear Friend. Roberto Persich fought with all his strength, helped along by the endless love of his wife and family. An example of courage and the desire to hold on to the life and all its joys. The Association would like to offer their heartfelt condolences to Roberto's family, and in the hope that his loss will not be in vain, we are publishing the following letter that Roberto wrote shortly before his death. On the next page there is the open letter written by the lawyer Ezio Bonanni to Roberto after his death.
These days, the word "asbestos" strikes fear into everyone's hearts; even more so when it drops like a bomb on a family in the form of a malignant pleuric mesothelioma. Then, life becomes an endless hell and suffering: operations, long periods of time away from home. A glimmer of hope is provided by a team of doctors.
The fear of not making it, the desperation of the family. They give me a ray of hope – a smile that says, Come on, you can do it, and you believe them. You cling on with whatever strength you have to try and make it. To show to yourslef and to the ones you love that despite everything, life is still beautiful even if there is so much pain...
The moment comes to leave the doctors that gave you a ray of hope and you are scared. You feel afraid, you feel bad and you have no strength left but you still have a lot of suffering to go through , since you know that the road you have set out on is long, and you’re not sure if you will make it.
You start with terrible rounds of therapy. "Chemotherapy", even the word is scary... endless suffering, you ask God to help you, to watch over your family, your wife that suffers in silence but that is always by your side with desperation in her heart. But a smile on her lips says "my darling, please, be strong". Then arrives the radiotherapy, it's hell on earth and you feel your insides burning but they tell you its for your own good. After this came a new verdict "a bronchial fistulae" and you say "Hell! Why does this all happen to me?" Taken into hospital again, further suffering, therapy and another operation.
I ask myself "...but when will all this end?". My strength now comes from my wife that follows me and never lets go, she still makes me feel like the most precious thing in her life and with a faint smile on my lips I say to her "Thanks".
It doesn’t stop here and the doctors suggest trying a new operation to speed things up. They tell me "You are young, you can do it" And I feel so tired of all this suffering, I want to say, enough is enough but there are others that are counting on me. Other poorly people that are following the same tortuous road as me, a road known as the street of suffering, and I can’t let them down. They are counting on me.
Fourteen months have passed since that day and my thoracic cavity is still open. What with medication and atrocious pain, in the not too distant future yet another operation lies ahead, yet more suffering.
I am still here together with my wife to help other people that unfortunately have to follow the same route as me. With words and my wife's sweetness we are trying to give them strength in the same way that we managed to find it.
Now after all of this suffering for us there is the joke of bureaucracy. People suffering from asbestosis that should be protected by the law, hear themselves told "I’m sorry you have to wait". If you can manage to get it, they give you the label of being too ill to work, due to work related illness – thank God for that, at least that, after so many years being exposed to asbestos. Then you get the bright idea that they should compensate you for the years when you were exposed to asbestos. You think, just as well that they will give me at least some recognition after all that suffering. But here comes the real joke!
People that have been exposed to asbestos have the possibility to take early retirement. With a sigh of relief, those that fall ill have to see their years divided into many many years. So in the end, they recognise 12 years of exposure to asbestos, but to reward you for your suffering they tell you "we are only going to give you 6 years!". What a marvellous national insurance system we have. It rewards those that have been good enough not to get sick and those unlucky ones that do are penalised... they were so stupid to breathe in so much asbestos.
Not to mention biological damage, even more suffering, suffering without end: will I get it, won't I get it? Maybe my suffering wasn't enough, everything I had to deal with, the pain that my family went through, our lives destroyed, our hopes for the future up in smoke, my compromise with the future, I was no longer the man I was before. It took away my dreams and my hopes for the future but not my strength to fight, to have what life has taken away from me.
The damages that they pay out will never be enough to repay what I have been through over the past three years, but I hope it will be enough to get through what God has in store for me in a dignified way. I am not a puppet, I am Roberto, with so much will to live and laugh and above all to see the smiling hopeful faces of my wife and children.
Roberto Persich