Gianluca Vialli at 55 is fighting the most important match of his life. Yesterday celebrating his birthday she wrote. "... Outside the hospital it says" Humanitas ". The doctor tells me I have to stop. What should I stop?
The answer is given by the MRI:
Stop everything Luca. You have pancreatic cancer.
When they tell me, I still don't know which is one of the most serious. But I get it from how the doctor blows words out of his lips: "Chances are good" ...
Good chance of what? When I understand it, I, who up to that point in my life knew nothing about diseases, biopsies, pet scans, lymph nodes and contrast fluids, I feel lost ...
You have to move quickly, I have a week before the operation.
When I wake up after the surgery my wife is there, I have tubes connected to my neck and abdomen. And a long scar between the abs.
Her eyes burn with happiness.
"She went well," she says. "How long do I have to stay here" I ask her.
"Fifteen days".
I leave the hospital after six, amid protests from doctors who still invite me to share a long treatment with Professor Cunningham, in London.
But first there is Christmas. We spend it in England all together and I look at these people as I had never seen him before.
On Boxing Day I tell the girls. How? Just as I am saying it to you.
As I talk to them, and they cry, I understand that it is not true that cancer is the great enemy to be defeated. It's not a fight to kill him, but it's a challenge to change yourself ...
I need to dialogue with fear. The real fear, the one that makes you lock yourself in the bathroom and cry; fear of not being able to say the words you need.
I talk about it with Cunningham:
"Doctor you believe that I can heal by thinking positively that I will heal."
He, a man of science, answers me yes.
That's all I need. I build a new routine around it and dedicate myself to it body and soul: I wake up early, I meditate on small fundamental phrases, I seek silence, I focus on pleasant details, I exercise, I read and write a positive thought every day ... a series of yellow post-its the sentences that are in my book. As I write these lines I have finished chemo and radio treatments but I still do not know how this game will end, I will find out later. What I do know is that I prepared well and gave my best; that my team couldn't play better.
And that they passed the ball to me, like you pass it to a striker.
So I'm there in front, I can see the net well, as well as the goal line and the end line. I know how. But every time you kick to score it's always like the first time: you need a lot of courage.
And a bit of luck too. "Give me your birthday wishes ..."