Adriana santagati
10/17/2020 4:21 PM
Clarín.com
Society
Updated 10/17/2020 4:45 PM
Juli was at the clinic, finishing one of her treatment sessions.
Sitting on the couch in the bedroom, her backpack ready to go home for a few weeks, she told her mother that she had to ask her
a difficult question
.
She got ready to answer what she didn't want to answer, but what Juli wanted to know surprised her:
"Am I going to be able to go back to school?"
.
Two years have passed since that day and today, in the interview on the other side of Zoom with
Clarín
, Juli asks if the photographer can go right on time for a class that he doesn't like so much.
She laughs, and the curlers tamed by her braids laugh with her.
Juli is 12 years old, she went back to school and
beat childhood cancer
.
And not only that: she transformed the path of her treatment (because she never felt that she was
ill
, but
in treatment
) into
a solidarity project that does not stop growing
.
She started cooking cookies and
Juli's Cookies
became a success that generated and generates donations for several hospitals.
And besides, now Juli published a book.
Juli in the place she enjoys the most: the kitchen.
Photo Emmanuel Fernández
The story begins in September 2018. The assembled family of Julieta Leonetti Aguado had just received the news that her mother and her partner were going to have a baby.
Another little brother or sister joined Juli and Olivia, her younger sister, then 6.
But Juliet began to have a
fever for no apparent reason
.
It went up, down, after a week it went up again.
And his plump cheeks suddenly turned pale.
That was the red flag: Soledad was on a work trip when the paleness joined other lines on the thermometer and Gustavo, her partner, called her on the phone.
"I'm going to call a home pediatrician."
The family's gratitude to that doctor, of which they did not even have the name, is
eternal
.
She noticed that something was really wrong.
He indicated studies, which were the key to early diagnosis and the path to treatment at the exact moment.
The treatment that replaced the disease.
The creams
Confirmation of the diagnosis came in October:
acute lymphocytic leukemia
.
It was a bucket for everyone.
The chemotherapy cycles, the hospitalizations began.
“But we stopped wondering why it happened and we decided to put the joy with which we always live, and redouble it.
We decided that wherever Juli was, at home or at the clinic, it would be a party,
”Soledad recalls.
On the days that she was going to hospital, Juli carried a suitcase full of things: toys, books, pencils, music.
In the room, they always tried to fill it with light, in every way.
The famous seeds.
Juli with her sisters Olivia and Antonia, her mother and Soledad's partner.
Photo Emmanuel Fernández
Although there are things that cannot be avoided.
Like pain, discomfort.
Although it does mitigate them.
That's what the “cremitas” are for, as Juli tells them, the local painkillers that are used where the lines for the medication are placed.
And also the "foam", another product that is used to remove the adhesive tapes and that it hurts less.
Juli says that "they are expensive" and difficult to find here, and that is why they began to ask every acquaintance who traveled abroad to bring them to them.
But one day, a nurse told him that
not all boys could access the "creams"
.
"I said, 'Oh, stop, then everything hurts,'" he reviews today by doing the little gesture that one imagines he did before.
Juli put her head to walk: we had to help the children who did not have creams.
And he came up with what to do:
cookies
.
Soledad says that her daughter always liked to cook.
And he was driving the whole family around that project.
The Holidays were approaching, so they looked for Christmas cookie recipes on YouTube and Pinterest, they began to knead and sell, first to acquaintances, at school and neighbors of the Escobar neighborhood where they live.
All that, between your treatment sessions.
The hurricane of las pepas
The Christmas cookies swept.
And in January, Juli reinvented herself.
He bought other cutters, looked for new recipes, and started making quince seeds: they were a hurricane.
Juli wrote down the orders in her notebook, kneaded, prepared the bags.
He came to dispatch five kilos of beans in one day.
He started selling them at Capital.
Her mom posted the story of her cookies.
From the Antigourmet group they shared it, in addition to starting to sell the seeds in their restaurants.
And there Loli appeared.
Loli Palazzo is a pastry chef, owner of Tan Rico Patisserie.
He read the Antigourmet post and wrote to Julieta to offer her pastry classes.
The girl not only became his student, but also his partner.
Juli's Cookies added muffins, puddings, brownies, trays for Father's Day and now they made chocolates for Mother's Day.
Hands to the dough.
Cooking with Olivia.
Photo Emmanuel Fernández
Clarín
had counted Juli's initiative for Children's Day last year.
Since then, it has grown exponentially.
For example, they began to receive orders from companies, and thus Juli came to decorate 200 trucks for the convention in which the Argentine Association of Elaborated Concrete celebrated its 40th anniversary.
And the project continued to climb with
there is a team to cook!
, the book of recipes and games that Juli and Loli have just published and that will also feed this great solidarity movement with its sales, and that can now be purchased through the Picnic Area, an undertaking that Soledad created to transmit all the recreational experiences that learned on this long journey since Juli's diagnosis.
The happiness of helping
“Many people gave a hand to make this work,”
Soledad thanks.
Because what began as "creams", added bandanas, toys and books to paint for the little patients in cancer treatment.
Juli estimates that they have already helped about five or six hospitals, to which they not only donated analgesic creams but also equipped their hematology and oncology rooms with games.
Thus, he says, he learned that "toys cannot be stuffed animals or masses, they do not have to collect dirt and they have to be able to be cleaned, like blocks."
Juli remembers when with Loli they went to take those toys to the Del Viso pediatric hospital.
One was a foosball.
After putting it together, “some boys came and we all played foosball with one hand”, because one of the patients had a line in place.
So, everyone else hid a hand, to be equal.
"She makes me very happy.
I like it ”, Juli responds when asked how she feels when all her work materializes in helping others.
He says it and smiles, transparent.
He also smiles when he thinks about what he will be like when he grows up.
Pastry chef?
"Yes, but
I want to have a food truck
, because I really like to cook salty too."
Juli is excited when she thinks of the more immediate future.
"We are looking for new places to donate," he anticipates.
Next is the former San Carlos, also from Del Viso, which has now become a hospital for the elderly.
It occurred to Juli that
the interned grandparents also deserved to play
and her goal now is to buy wool, needles, cards, chess games and board games to take away.
With his younger sister.
Her mother became pregnant with Antonia when Juli was in treatment.
Photo Emmanuel Fernández
Play, as she plays with Olivia and Antonia, the younger sister, and with Tyrion, the French bulldog that she was given for Children's Day.
His name was chosen, he says, because he looks like Tyrion Lannister, one of the most famous characters on Game of Thrones.
"It's pronounced
Tirion
but everyone
calls
him
Tairon
like the Backyardigans," she gets annoyed, amused.
He laughs again and moves his curlers.
And she ends the talk to put her hands in the dough again, which makes her so happy.
ACE
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