A river of thanks accompanies the photos shared on Instagram by journalist Concita De Gregorio. “I owe you all a huge thank you for the words, gestures, letters, gifts of these days that – clearly, for me – mark a boundary between the time before and the time of today. I have not been able to respond to each one as I would have liked. I do it here with a story that begins with the end. On August 20,” he writes. The journalist spent her third consecutive vacation in August in hospital, after discovering a malignant tumor in 2022. De Gregorio left today, Tuesday, August 20, from the Sant Pau public hospital in Barcelona.
Childhood memories
Here, in the Catalan capital, the journalist found himself there by chance but could not help but notice the coincidence: “The joy of returning to the favorite place in the city of my childhood (it was there that I was when there was an urgent need for treatment, I did not choose, it was an emergency).” The journalist's mother is in fact Catalan and the places she visited nevertheless make her go back years: “A small reward when leaving, the red shoes of my memories (as a child, there was always a reward after an effort. For example, a bread eraser, a pencil sharpener with a belly, a churro).” Leaving a hospital should make you breathe a sigh of relief, but for De Gregorio, there was rather “a lump in the throat and the nostalgia of a loss. “Nobody cries when leaving Urgencias, much less when entering”, laughed @ro_lazz_, (from Romagna, from Faenza) one of the specialists who, with @stephchavm (Peruvian, from Lima), I thank them, both for everyone, in this incredible prodigy of the emergencies of precision, care, cleanliness, kindness”.
The Hospital Companions
The thanks then go to the hospital attendants: “In the photo, with his permission, Angelina, my neighbor stationed in the ward and 'control tower' beyond the tent. How many cooked carrots have we eaten, “maybe there is a plantation in the basement” – he laughed. From the nurses, I learned that to “it hurts”, “I am exhausted”, the answer is “I know, I understand you”. “I understand you”. It doesn't take much else.” And then De Gregorio reflects, there is hope for public health, she has experienced it: “In the hospital there is a piano that everyone plays from eight to eight, a library and a common room on each floor. No time limit for visits. Laura, Giorgina, María del Mar, the auxiliaries and nurses who, when they returned from resting in the ward, told me: yesterday, at home, I was thinking about how you are, how you are all. It's the truth. So it is possible, it is a system and a pride: public health. A thousand thoughts to those who remain. To those who are always there when needed, otherwise what the hell do we do. Thank you all, one by one.”
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