'Time runs and threatens me': he has cancer and needs the Covid vaccine, but they do not consider it a priority

Javier Firpo

03/27/2021 17:00

• Clarín.com

• Society

Updated 03/27/2021 17:00

Damián Blas Vives is a man of culture, a love that was born when, when he was just four years old, he surprised his parents by reading.

Since then he became a voracious reader and during his childhood and adolescence

only asked for gift books

.

That is why it is not surprising that he has worked for more than two decades at the National Library, where he is

director of Cultural Policies and Management

.

However, the current situation has Damián on the ropes, who, aged 42, has been hospitalized for a month at Hospital El Cruce, in Florencio Varela, where

a tumor was removed from his jaw at the beginning of January

and was He placed a titanium prosthesis, but weeks later he was hospitalized again for an infection in the healing.

For the pandemic times, he is

a risk patient

: diabetic, obese, with two episodes of pneumonia in recent years and the imminent oncological treatment, he

is urgent for the Covid vaccine

.

But...

As he lives in the city of Buenos Aires, the category to which he belongs, 

"Adults between 18 and 59 years old with risk factors"

, is ranked fifth in the priorities, behind health personnel, of adults over 70 -80 years, of adults over 60 years of age and of the personnel of the armed forces, security and penitentiaries.

"They have not yet finished vaccinating those over 80 years of age and there

is talk that there are few vaccines, imagine my situation, it is really complex,

" Damián writes.

Damián Vives (42), interned at Hospital El Cruce, in Florencia Varela.

He appealed to the Ombudsman's Office to request a priority vaccination shift.

Yes, Damián writes, because due to the infection that has him mistreating him,

 he cannot speak, nor chew or swallow

.

When the pain gives him respite, when he does not have a fever, when he is without the effects of clonazepam, which allows him to rest from time to time, this editor of the Evaristo Cultural label corrects with his laptop pending works that have accumulated since he went through this "

gale unexpected that shook friends and strangers

".

Strange because from the world of culture, displays of affection raised his spirits.

Describes the tumor was diagnosed in December, intervened in January and should make radiotherapy no later than May, when four months fulfilled the operation, "

for

otherwise no radiation would effect and could return cancer

. For all This is because the doctors ask me to get vaccinated, because my health situation would

not withstand a Covid contagion

.

Moreover

, they told me that if it is with Sputnik it will be better because the ray treatment, it seems, attenuates the effectiveness of some of the vaccines, in some cases even useless,

but the Russian is still highly effective

. "

Damien says that he has ups and downs, that "the stay is getting tough and very long."

Sometimes he is calm, diving into his world of writing and reading in the hospital room: "Luckily my sister brings me books every week and now I am embarking on Japanese stories."

Other times his current affairs and that of the country have him taken hostage.

"To think that

everything was born with a phlegmon

that was checked by a dentist, who referred me to a stomatologist, who ordered a biopsy and ... get out!

" They took out the right half of my jaw

.

"

"What makes me sadder and I experience it as a personal frustration is the enormous cultural failure. It is striking that the common citizen does not realize that everything is wrong," says Vives.

Contained, respectful and measured, Damien masks his despair.

"

I am afraid for the complications that may arise ...

And the truth is, I cannot believe I am going through this and above at this time," he slides and makes it known that he tries not to be so aware of the news about the few vaccines that arrive or they delay, "because it squeezes my chest."

And he points out that "I accidentally found out about this 18-year-old fellow (Stefanía Purita Díaz) who was vaccinated and

I find it as pathetic as the thousands of cases that occurred in other districts

."

This type of perks for being a militant upset Damián, who

does not want to politicize with his illness

and who is awake at one in the morning.

"They did everything wrong on both sides, everything wrong. But what makes me sadder and I experience it as a personal frustration

is that the common citizen does not realize that everything is wrong

, no matter what political color they are. I see people bewildered, without understanding their rights, anchored in a petty individualism. "

The messages between Damián and

Clarín

have been going on for days.

He answers when he can, when the vertigo that surrounds him gives him respite.

"All this landscape does nothing more than make me feel like an asshole, and regret a lot of decisions that I have made in all my life. If the Covid does not kill me, I will have to reorder myself and

 begin to put aside an idealism that does not correspond to the reality of society

".

Other times not so distant: Here with Jean-Pierre Léaud, the French actor Truffaut's fetish, who was the baby of "The 400 blows".

I would rather talk about literary contests or graphic novels than about their clinical condition, which today is delicate.

"

I need the vaccine for the treatment of rays, which will be daily and outpatient

, and my defenses will lower a bit, in addition to that it implies two trips (by taxi or group) to a medical center where everyone who is there goes to have the same two trips per day, with what that means. The issue is not that it has more chances of contagion but, in the face of contagion, less chances of surviving it, "he explains.

He admits the extra stress of the uncertainty of vaccination, "

a headache greater than the disease itself

," he points out on WhatsApp.

As said, he is hospitalized in the province of Buenos Aires, but he is from the Capital and the City replied that "

vaccination is not foreseen for cases like mine

, that there is no option and no type of exception is contemplated in this regard. weird, showy and immoral. Time runs and threatens me. "

Medical personnel come in to treat him and do new studies.

"We follow her," he excuses himself.

A couple of hours go by and he reconnects, lets it be known that he is "anesthetized", but that he can move his fingers to type.

"What confuses me a bit is that recently the executive director of the Comprehensive Medical Care Program, Carlos Javier Regazzoni, publicly declared that

the priorities to access vaccination against Covid-19 should be oncology patients

with active cancer, diabetics, and obesity , COPD patients, and cardiac patients. And I fulfill the first three options ".

According to the website argentina.gob.ar/coronavirus/vacunacion, the Public Vaccination Monitor reports that up to March 24,

192,375 people between 18 and 59 years old with risk factors were applied the vaccine

.

"Surely they are from the whole country except the city of Buenos Aires. It must be emphasized that the city has

the largest population of older adults and health personnel

, not the rest of the country, so we do not have availability, given that the totality that the Nation has given us was for these sectors that have not yet been completed, "they explained to this medium from the Health area of ​​the Buenos Aires Government.

In Córdoba, in a cultural event, together with personalities such as Juan Sasturain, Néstor Ponce, José María Gatti, Javier Chiabrando, Orlando Van Bredam and Ramón Díaz Eterovic.

"Today our focus

 -

-they continued-

is to finish vaccinating health personnel and the elderly

and thus continue with the order of priorities, so within those 192,375 residents of CABA will surely not be found, because

the political decision that It has been taken to follow the risk stratification, 

applying one hundred percent of what is received to those segments. For now, the available vaccines are already assigned. We will see in the future. "

With this panorama, says Damián, "it became clear to me that it was not me who did not find the mechanism or where to start the process, but that

this reality of thousands had not been contemplated

. That is why I decided to write to the Ombudsman's Office, because really I believe that

my rights are being violated

, indeed, the supreme legal good, which is the right to life. "

As

Clarín was

able to find out

, this administrative entity already

made a formal request

last Thursday addressed to Minister Fernán Quirós "in which the patient's problems are described and it

is recommended

that it be taken into account for vaccination", says Pablo Mazzolli, Health Director of the Ombudsman's Office.

"Yes we must admit and I give you the right, that the

City is proceeding according to the priorities

, which are health personnel and the elderly."

Mazzolli makes it known that, as part of a control body, he is behind many cases such as Damien's, "but

we cannot get water from the stones, if there is no availability, what can we do?

Just trust the openness and receptivity of the Dr. Fernán Quirós and his team to try to solve the problems that arise ".

This Tuesday is the deadline to give an answer. 

Contact with Damián Vives lasted about ten days, during which time the editor gradually improved.

We return to Florencia Varela.

"Relatively calm" returned after a chest x-ray for severe back discomfort diagnosed pneumonia.

"They were days of tension, imagine if the original problem is complicated and this will mean a week or two more, interned," he suggests his downturn but orally.

Little by little, with discomfort, he can utter a word, "in that aspect the pains have eased."

And in a more complicit tone, and tired of his new normal, he confesses that he misses "a certain freedom of movement that I had in my house, the piano lessons at Zoom and my libraries", although he estimates that in this month he read about ten books.

Also imagine going back to eating by mouth, something that had started in the first weeks of February ... "And I confess that

I long for some peace of mind when planning projects

. I had started to prepare a book on Japanese culture, which is still in the middle of this tsunami, I promised myself to finish. "

ACE

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