“I haven’t said everything I wanted to say on the radio,” laments Eduardo Lozano, 60, single and childless. Thus he receives The vanguard in room 605 of the Duran i Reynals hospital, a Hestia Alliance social health center in l’Hospitalet de Llobregat. “What do you want to add?” journalists ask him hours after this patient convulsed the RAC1 audience. And rightly so: he has been hospitalized for covid for two years.
“I have told Jordi Basté that I don’t have a family or that the one I do have is very far away. Actually I have a very extensive family: my friends and my taxi mates, who have given me a lot of clothes, have helped me buy that suitcase there and have been interested in the evolution of my very long hospital stay. ‘Cheer up, one thirty‘, I would have liked to tell them on the air. You say it in my name, please”.
The before and after of the ICU
The one thirty. This is how the taxi is known in jargon: a Cabify license for every thirty taxis. Eduardo has been a taxi driver since 1989. His last four cars have been three Seats and a Toyota: a 1430 butane that he soon got rid of (he doesn’t remember how many kilometers he drove with it), a Toledo (seven years, 450,000 kilometers), an Octavia (7.5 years, 480,000 kilometers) and his current Prius (with which he has already done 310,000).
In total, 1,240,000 kilometers. He could have circled the world more than 97 times. And yet, the horizon of this passionate about travel (“and gastronomy: in almost all my photos I appear sitting at the table”) has been limited to four walls in the last two years. He was one of those infected in the first wave of the pandemic. He is convinced that he contracted the virus while working, taking someone to the hospital.
On May 16, 2020, his internal alarms went off. He was not very overweight. He measures 1.80 and then weighed about 86 kilos. But she loves to eat (her favorite dishes: calçots, llauna snails and cim i tomba, a typical recipe of the fishermen of Tossa de Mar). That day he discovered that he had not only had a high fever for a few days, but that he had lost his taste. The food tasted like nothing. He got scared.
On the 21st he worked until four in the morning, but the next morning the discomfort worsened and he called 112. An ambulance picked him up at the apartment in El Prat where he had a rented room and took him to the Bellvitge hospital. He was in the waiting room and later they took him to semi-critical to end up spending three months in the ICU, two in a coma. He believes, but without being sure, that when he woke up he said: “Where am I?”
Traces of his knee injuries are still visible
And where was he?, they ask him now. “She was in public health, in the blessed public health.” Thanks to the taxi, she had already discovered how much we owe to hospitals and health personnel. She moved women in labor and, once, a worker who severed his arm with a saw. “Some time later, and we are talking about 1993 or 1994, I returned to his company to inquire about him and they told me that they had reimplanted his arm.”
He also knew how much public health can do for us following the deaths of his parents, Pilar and Eduardo, “who left as we all will one day, but they did so surrounded by the best care.” He now he has verified in his own flesh what he already knew. When he left the ICU in Bellvitge he had lost 35 kilos. He asked for a mirror to see his face and they didn’t give it to him. “You’ll get scared”.
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“He looked like a prisoner in a Nazi camp, a skeleton. He didn’t even have the strength to lift the sheet.” Eduardo is diabetic, but he had no other pathologies that aggravated the coronavirus. “Doctors have told me that if he had been a smoker, he wouldn’t be here now. And if he hadn’t been for them, neither would ”. “For them?”. “Yes, because of people like Irene, the nursing supervisor at Duran i Reynals, and so many others.”
By doctors, toilets, auxiliaries and cleaning staff. For Laia, an ICU nurse who wept with joy when she saw him on the ward out of danger (please, Laia, if you read these lines, get in touch with Edu: he wants to thank you and can’t find you because you now work in another hospital) . Or like Gabi, Charo, Marta and Candi, who changed her diapers with the same tenderness that she would have used for a family member…
Laia, you who took such good care of me in the ICU, if you read this call me so I can thank you, please”
“Do you see how I do have a family, despite what I said in RAC1?” repeats Edu. In his room, there are still two balloons, one red and one green, along with congratulations signs. It’s from the party they threw for him. She was born on March 11 and has celebrated two birthdays at the hospital. She expects to be discharged at the end of the month, just a few days away from the exact two years of his hospitalization. She has regained weight, but it is difficult for her to walk and her covid is still present.
He had a cruel reminder when the interview with RAC1 ended. His partner, Mr. Miguel, 82 years old, the occupant of bed 1, was not there. They had transferred him because he had tested positive. Room 605 was thoroughly disinfected. Edu underwent an antigen test, which was negative, and a PCR. She trusts that the results will also be negative. At the end of the month, discharge repeats like the castaway who shouts Earth!
He lost 35 kilos
On his knees he has traces of the lacerations he suffered for so long face down in the ICU. Candi, the same one who changed his diapers, affectionately called him poodle. She did it because Edu had crooked legs and seemed short, although in reality he is not. He measures 1.80. When she finally saw him standing with his legs fully stretched out, Candi said, “But you’re taller than me, poodle!”. Now walk in three ways.
When he goes to rehab in the afternoons, he grabs the railing along the hallway. In the room, for short trips, such as when he could go to the coffee machine on the sixth floor, he used a crutch. Before Mr. Miguel tested positive, when he could take a short walk around the hospital, he used a walker. He can’t close his hands properly or squeeze a steering wheel.
The memory of his last birthday
The one thirty It’s over. The medical court has given him disability. Maybe one day he can drive again, but not professionally. He will sell the taxi and the license. He will start a new life at the age of 60, although the immediate future is unknown. He has spent two years on a hiatus. He would want to go back to his landlady in that apartment in El Prat where he had a room. But now there is another tenant in his place.
He has plans. Likes to travel. A Peruvian couple he met in Barcelona and who have settled in Switzerland want him to come see them for a week when he recovers. She also has a friend in Fuengirola (Málaga) who has offered her her house for a few days off. Yes, of course she has plans. When asked what she’ll do as soon as she’s out, she doesn’t hesitate. Beneath her mask, a smile can be glimpsed. She sighs and says, “Live.”
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