Every time he gets behind the wheel of his car to go to the hospital, every time he changes into his overcoat and his charlotte, he looks around the emergency room, she’s there, this "faithful and inseparable companion". "I discovered fear. The fear of being helpless, the fear of doing wrong. The fear of not being ready, of not doing enough. And to be alone ”. These words are those of Davide Tizzani, 35, posted on March 26 on a blog, EMpills, dedicated to emergency medicine in Italy. An outlet, in the midst of a sanitary storm due to the coronavirus, for this young intern sent like so many others to the front - "in the trenches", even say the Italians.
At the San Giovanni Bosco hospital in Turin, where he officiates, he has as colleague his own brother, Pietro, an intern like him. No wonder for the Tizzani, of whom no less than six brothers and sisters are today on the front line to fight the virus, in a family where medicine is a vocation that is transmitted from generation to generation.
In Giaveno, a town of 17,000 inhabitants on the outskirts of Turin and the birthplace of the Tizzani family, we remember their grandfather Felice, "doctor in the Sangone valley and resistant until the end of the Second World War" and their father Pier Luigi, who died in 2015, "a long time head of department at Giaveno hospital", reports La Valsusa, a local weekly newspaper which chose to highlight - and in the headlines - the Tizzani in its latest issue, this Thursday, April 2. Siblings "in combat in this grueling struggle against an invisible enemy," praises the weekly, echoing Davide's writings.
In this hard-hitting text, the young practitioner also says he is tormented by "the anxiety of seeing that the next patient is your own colleague", when almost 10% of Italian patients are now carers and 73 doctors have already paid their life the grueling fight against the epidemic.
"Our father had a big heart"
Of the eleven children Pierluigi Tizzani had with his wife Rosina, herself a former medical student, six have embraced the profession. In addition to Davide, the youngest, and Pietro, there is also Emmanuele, cardiologist, bombarded head of the Covid department at the hospital in Rivoli, in the Turin suburbs. This is also where big sister Barbara, a geriatrician, works every day helping her patients to communicate with their families, often for the last time, using tablets.
"It is heartbreaking but necessary, the patients are alone and they are thus provided with an essential service because their loved ones cannot visit them," she told the daily La Stampa which, like other transalpine newspapers, put in the honor of this family in the wake of the exclusive article from La Valsusa.
“Our father had a big heart, he made free visits. Her example was instrumental in my choices, ”she continues. Her two sisters, Maria and Alessandra, also work at the front at the Cirié hospital, the first as an emergency warder, the second as a geriatrician. Like Davide, they still bear witness to this double pain, the pain of self-confinement once they get home, this mask that they even wear at home, for fear of contaminating their own. And this "loneliness", writes Davide with modesty, faced with the anxieties of work that must be faced "without having anyone to share them with and fight them effectively".
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The history and commitment of the Tizzani siblings begin to tour the Italian media and social networks, arousing admiration and gratitude. David Sassoli, the new president of the European parliament, himself made a point of greeting the three sisters and the three brothers by putting them in the spotlight on his personal Facebook account: "To you and to all Italian doctors, nurses and carers , thank you. "
Since the start of the pandemic in Italy, several thousand health workers have been infected with Covid 19, and many are still hospitalized in intensive care units. The spotlight on the Tizzani siblings is also a way of paying tribute to them. To all.
