Former Uruguayan President José Mujica attended a political event after being discharged from the hospital where he was admitted with a decompensation due to his oncological treatment. “He is fragile,” his doctor confirmed.
“Today has been a tough day. I’m trying to get back on my feet as best I can, but I had to be there,” said the 89-year-old former president, after entering the headquarters of the left-wing coalition Frente Amplio (FA), the country’s main opposition force, in a wheelchair.
Amid loud applause, “Pepe” Mujica, a former guerrilla who was president of Uruguay between 2010 and 2015, announced the incorporation into the party of journalist Blanca Rodríguez, known for hosting one of the country’s main television news programs for more than 30 years.
“Succeeding in life is getting up and starting over”
Mujica, one of Uruguay’s most popular figures, said it was “an honour” to have Rodríguez, who will be running for the Senate in the October 27 general elections in second place on the list of the group led by the former president.
After praising Rodríguez’s skills, which, he said, “will serve to enrich the Senate (…) with her polished and elegant language, with her authentic feminism,” the former president thanked “life” for her decades of active activism at 89 years of age and despite her recent health complications.
“I have been fighting since I was 14 and I am in my 90s, I am scraping by – applauded – but, to everyone: to succeed in life is to get up and start over every time you fall. There is no definitive triumph because there is no definitive defeat if you keep a strong heart,” he concluded to applause.
At the event, held on Tuesday (27.08.2024), Mujica sat next to his wife, former Vice President Lucía Topolansky. And near them was his family doctor, Raquel Pannone, who had earlier reported at a press conference about Mujica’s discharge, after being hospitalized on Monday afternoon due to a deterioration in kidney function.
Cancer “was treated and is not the current problem”
Mujica, who was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in early May and underwent radiotherapy until June 16, had been receiving IV fluids at home since Friday, the doctor said.
“The consequences of radiotherapy have made it more difficult for him to eat and he has taken less liquid. This has worsened his kidney function,” Pannone explained. “He is fragile,” he said, but he was optimistic about the former president’s recovery despite his advanced age and the kidney failure and vasculitis that he also suffers from.
“We are strongly convinced that the cancer has been cured,” Pannone said, noting that several CT scans and a fibrogastroscopy showed no evidence of the tumor. “Everything suggests that the evolution was good,” he added.
Pannone said that Mujica lost weight and muscle mass, but “in no way” is he suffering from malnutrition.
“He has underlying pathologies and this makes him weaker, more debilitated. But if we manage to get him to drink water, to recover, that will improve,” he said, adding that the cancer “was treated and is not the current problem.”
Pannone said that Mujica is “not in his best mood” but remains “very lucid as always.” He stressed that “he is not under home confinement.”
Asked how Topolansky, a 79-year-old former guerrilla who was vice president for the FA between 2017 and 2020, is coping with the situation, Pannone said that she “is in good health” although what she is experiencing is “very exhausting.”
“It also requires a greater effort from her and that has also distanced her a bit from political activity, but she is very active as always,” he said.
«I am at the time of leaving”
From the farm on the outskirts of Montevideo where the couple lives, Mujica spoke about his health in an interview published Friday by the American newspaper The New York Times.
“I had an X-ray treatment. According to the doctors, it went well, but I am devastated,” he said. He then added: “Life is beautiful. With all its twists and turns, I love life. And I am missing it because I am at the point of leaving.”
From the farm on the outskirts of Montevideo where the couple lives, Mujica spoke about his health in an interview published Friday by the American newspaper The New York Times.
“I had an X-ray treatment. According to the doctors, it went well, but I am devastated,” he said. He then added: “Life is beautiful. With all its twists and turns, I love life. And I am missing it because I am at the point of leaving.”
Mujica, who in the 1960s and 1970s took up arms with the Tupamaros movement against democratic governments and spent 13 years in prison, most of it during the civil-military dictatorship (1973-1985) and in inhumane conditions, celebrated on June 30 the victory of his successor Yamandú Orsi as the FA presidential candidate.
Last Sunday he sent a recorded message, released on social media, urging Frente Amplio members to redouble their militancy to return to power in 2025.
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