Dear Nicola,
allow me to give you the “Tu” for the familiarity perceived by following you with pleasure very often. I’ll try to be brief, although I have a lot to say.
I am writing to your mail because today I am particularly “pissed off” (can I say it?). I am a very normal 44-year-old person who unfortunately, for health reasons, he had to clash several times with the national health system, in all its facets, after all like everyone else. However, I have a particular reason that pushes me to express my anger, something that my balanced nature always tends to put in the background: it is the belief, it will be trivial to say, according to which those who “for a profession” have chosen to work in contact with people he should also pass an empathy exam. Without ifs and buts. I could stop here, but the reason for this reflection of mine, so simple but I assure you so heartfelt, is my story, which I try to summarize.
I have been orphaned of a mother since the age of 16. She passed away at 49, struck down by the evil of the century. I followed in her footsteps in this too, with the good fortune of living this experience in a different era, in which medicine, luckily for us, has taken a few steps forward. So at least I, at least for the moment, can call myself a survivor. I was lucky enough to live in Rome when I received this diagnosis and to be promptly assisted at the S. Andrea, a structure which, at least in my experience, has proved to be an example of efficiency like few others. I have to say it: during the long period of therapy in the hematology department, I was treated like a friend, an acquaintance, someone who trivially deserved to be accompanied even simply with tact along this journey. If it is true that the emotional component is part of the treatment, I am convinced that having somehow gotten away with it up to now may depend not only on the experimental treatments I have received but also on the human component of the staff, from the head physician to the nurse, from the radiologist technician to the meal attendant.
Sure, it wasn’t easy, a thousand perspectives that I dreamed of as a kid have gone up in the air and I assure you that surviving has its daily costs in physical and emotional terms, because you never come out unscathed from certain treatments and every day lived represents an unknown factor, in the company of annoyances of any kind and that omnipresent woodworm that is your sword of Damocles, since you always wonder how much you have left, when this thing will return, thus canceling any medium-long term planning. But I don’t want to digress, but rather transfer to you the image of my state of mind, which does not transpire externally, given that my genetic heritage, albeit cracked by this heavy inheritance, requires me to represent myself as a strong person, to be me the shoulder of others you can rely on. But today, for the second time, I collapsed and I’ll tell you why.
After moving a few years ago to a few hundred kilometers north of the capital, here where public health is displayed in terms of efficiency as an emblem, together with those characteristic “red festivals” and the typical local cuisine, I tried to be followed ( I should be periodically monitored) by the hematology department of my city. Access already represents a challenge, almost touching the climate of recommendations that I sometimes breathed at the university. I remember my first and only check-up visit with extreme lucidity: the doctor of the moment, in the company of some trainees, did not speak with me, but questioned these people to understand if they were able to reach the right conclusions regarding my state of health . At the juncture of this “visit”, during which I wanted to ask if it was normal to have this or that annoyance, if this could be the indicator of a recrudescence, I, who generally expose myself without problems, I felt discouraged, disappointed, too many in that roomobject of didactic study rather than diagnostic attention I consider due.
On that occasion I interrupted the “Prof” lesson only for a question, perhaps the most heartfelt, asking why I always felt so terribly, incessantly and deeply tired. The Prof, as if I had made a joke, turns to his audience with a laugh and then to me, replying verbatim: “Ah, but that [la stanchezza, ndr] he has to keep it” and dismissing me with a goodbye at the next checkup. Fantozzi’s applause for the mega-director didn’t follow, but it would have fit perfectly. There has been no control since then, I didn’t feel like going back there to be used almost as an object of ridicule, it was stronger than me. Then the Covid period came and this, combined with the previous one and the fear of discovering something “new” made me give up.
Until today. Unfortunately I had some other health problems, which I hope can be resolved and, for other reasons, a doctor has prescribed me a haematological examination again. Armed with the referral, I discover that the visit cannot normally be booked but is placed on a waiting list. I then receive a call from an employee, after having resigned myself to going to a hematologist who works as a freelancer, who would have liked to set up an appointment for me. Fantastic, it’s a pity he too began with mockery (I sincerely thought it was a joke, albeit in bad taste), due to the fact that the prescription signed by the requesting doctor did not contain a clear diagnostic question. So this “character” asks me, in an evident provocative tone, if my nose itches, if my leg hurts or if I simply want to organize a game of cards or something like that. For me, who faces every visit with the terror of discovering “novelties” and every day with a “particular” mood, this mocking attitudeas if you were asking for a visit just for fun it frankly pissed me off. I answered in kind, that’s clear, but I thought of you and do you know why?
Because this attitudeMoreover, it also ruins the already fragile economy of our country. Yes, you read that right, I really do. In fact, those income earners who refuse to move from home were not enough (I have geographical origins close to yours and yet I did it), those young people who now often refuse salaries that are not comparable to the income of a “blogger” or some other deity media coverage of the moment, the difficulties of bills, taxes to be paid and all the rest that discourages any entrepreneurial initiative. No, we also needed this mass of people who would have to do without being in contact with their neighbor, even more so when the neighbor is not in his luckiest period, to strike a further blow, to make you want to believe in yourself and perhaps to invest in one’s own future, which is the future of an entire nation. These people, few or many I don’t know, are everywhere, in the ministry rather than in the local authority, in the hospital rather than at the post office, and they occupy that post aware of the fact that nothing can ever overthrow them.
Because, believe me, I have sometimes tried to decide to start my own business instead of settling for a minimum salary, to open that infamous VAT number that is tempting for many and which many instead terrifies. I tried to think of myself as “normal” for once, to challenge fate, health and luck, to imagine having in front of me the necessary time and sufficient strength to fulfill myself as I would like, but it is really a series of gestures like this , always suffered because of people of this type, which finally made me give up. Think that, for another matter, I even won a written appeal in my own hand before the CTP and against a local body which still today makes fun of the sentence and decides with impunity not to comply with it. Anyway, do you think the head of the office on the other side gives a damn about that? This attitude, in my way of seeing things, is the picture of the current state of things.
This impunity and this coeval lack of meritocracy, this comfortable and often desired inertia, are leading people, especially the new generations, to the most absolute torpor. The lack of initiative thus reaches even the “strongest” people with the most decisive character. I think we need to work in this direction e I hope that the current government will take this state of affairs seriouslybecause as long as there is a prospect characterized by strong uncertainty combined with a hostile climate, perceptible by all that is the interface between the state and the people, even the most motivated people will encounter a major obstacle to building something for their future .
Therefore, and I conclude, I don’t know if you will ever be able to read this of mine, even less if you want to publish it. Anyway, I hope it can inspire you. It’s a sincere outletbut I feel like bringing it to your attention because it affects two topical aspects, as important as they are highly controversial: the efficiency of the public sector on the one hand, the lack of motivation for entrepreneurship on the other, which is often amplified due to the first , not only as in my case and not only for the already too complicated bureaucratic superstructure, but also for the people who are immersed in it and who administer it or even constitute it or strengthen it, who seem to do everything but lend a hand to those who give The other party would simply like to be reassured a little and maybe (I say maybe) helped, rather than openly opposed at times.
With great esteem, I sincerely thank you for your attention.
A warm greeting,
M.
