At 82 years old,
the prestigious cardiologist Carlos Benjamín Alvarez
, recognized for his vast career but also because he spent
a long time with Diego Maradona
, and was the one who saved one of his many lives in 2004, frequently mentions the words relief and tranquility. .
"They are the sensations that I came here to look for, already a little tired with what there
. "
The play on words has to do with the fact that the doctor received
Clarín
in his office in front of the port of Punta del Este, after leaving Buenos Aires.
"I came little by little, trying out, in the middle of the pandemic, which was a hard time, because we worked for months without being vaccinated and in the most precarious conditions.
Medicine was becoming too politicized.
I lost several friendly colleagues, Unfortunately, and that was when with my artist lady, Fiona White, who was going through something similar in her increasingly unionized work, at the National Museum of Fine Arts,
we welcomed the thought of leaving our beloved Argentina
. "
He says that the first option was Spain and the second was to come here to Uruguay, "which we chose
not only because of its proximity, but because of its health policy against Covid
, in addition to the fact that here people were already vaccinated with Pfizer when it was in Argentina. "Sputnik had just arrived and all the confusion that was generated with the Russian vaccines," recalls the 19-year-old who was already working in the chair of Bernardo Houssay, Nobel Prize winner in Medicine.
To move to Uruguay and practice as a doctor, "without thinking about taking anyone's job," he emphasizes, Alvarez had to take his revalidation and return to his student days.
"I took criminal and civil law (Uruguayan), which led me to have to
study at 80 years old, 6 hours a day for six months
to finally obtain a doctorate at the University of the Republic. Beyond how hard it was ", it was worth the effort: residing in Uruguay represents
a very welcome quality of life for me at this stage of the game."
The quality of life - he emphasizes - "is what they always say, being able to be at two in the morning talking on the phone in the middle of the street with the peace of mind that no one is going to attack you, because above all things
in "Punta del Este there is no black market for cell phones."
Not only is the crime rate very low, he notes, but
"here 80 percent of the inhabitants have completed secondary school.
Education plays a fundamental role, exactly the opposite of what happens in Buenos Aires," reflects the specialist who in Argentina receives two minimum pensions.
The cardiologist Carlos Benjamín Alvarez, in his office in Esteño facing the port.
He recognizes that it was not easy to leave Argentina, a country that gave him a lot and the cardiologist more than repaid him.
"Do you know what it means at my age to be reunited with the chance to have projects and a future?
In my country, there is no project that is not linked to the State, no one can be successful in their profession or very few, if it is not the Ministry of Health in the middle. It is as frustrating as it is unbearable," says the professional whose hobbies are playing the guitar, riding a bicycle and going fly fishing.
Beyond the feelings for the country, family ties and lifelong friends, "Argentina is difficult, simply because it
is a very harmful country
. You just have to tune in to a news program and you find a barrage of pale people, it eats away at you." head. But this is not from now, the decline has been going on for decades," he affirms and comments.
"Maybe I
travel twice a month to Buenos Aires to see patients
, businessmen, bankers, people in power call me, they give me a charter plane and I travel. A few days ago I was there placing two stents in the aorta. The patient is fantastic ".
"It was not difficult for me to leave the country, Argentina is a harmful country," says cardiologist Carlos Alvarez.
Passionate about his profession, Alvarez, who
founded the Cardiology Institute of the Spanish Hospital and the Sacre Coeur clinic
, shares with this medium his vocation to be
updated
and continue learning.
"Every day I read at least five articles from scientific journals.
I cannot afford to not know what is happening in the scientific world
, that is why I am aware of everything, but in general doctors are trained to the bare minimum, they are more concerned about money than about evolving.
In Punta del Este, Alvarez has private patients, he carries out consultations and they come to him for second opinions.
"One of the things that made me most fed up with my blessed Argentina
is the institutionalization of corruption
. But I am not only referring to the shenanigans of the government that left, which got tired of the
shenanigans
, but to
the blind eye of a society that endorses and even celebrates cheating,
and from another wealthy society that lives in
an obscene wealth that no one knows how it was built".
Lover of music and guitar, he is taking flamenco classes.
Knowing the life of the former Minister of Health Ginés González García, Alvarez defines him as "a person who has dedicated himself to medical healthcare and
who dedicated himself to the political ties that led him to have a political position
and during the pandemic he was the face , the worst side, of the vaccines against Covid. The most outrageous thing was that, after having carried out all the research work prior to the development of the Pfizer vaccine, which Dr. Fernando Polack carried out at the Military Hospital, it was
signed an inexplicable contract with the Russian company Sputnik
, which at that time was not known what components it had.
He speaks of
"bread and circuses"
when referring to the political movement in which the then president Alberto Fernández and the former minister González García or who succeeded him, Carla Vizzoti, "took a photo with the vaccines and the plane in the background
generating "a ridiculous show
. Then there was the VIP vaccination and what everyone knows."
He shares that "in Uruguay they cannot believe how the country was destroyed, how the different governments emptied it and the worst thing was that corruption was institutionalized at all levels," he repeats. "And as serious as that is, society does not think it is bad." Let
the authorities work hard... You saw that saying 'they work hard but they do'. That's our country."
His link with Maradona
He remembers that two decades ago, exactly in this city, at the Cantegril clinic, he was urgently called to Buenos Aires, where he was, to travel and see Maradona.
"Alfredo Cahe - a well-known doctor from Diez - contacted me and I immediately flew to Uruguay, to the sanatorium where he was admitted to intensive care due to severe heart failure.
Diego was in serious condition, his heart had 27 percent of its functions and his chance of dying was high."
He remembers and the memories emerge as if it were yesterday.
"The first thing I did was draw his blood,
he had five thousand micrograms of cocaine ingested, which is outrageous
but Maradona was always strong as a bull. So after a week, I was able to restore him,
I managed to lose 20 kilos in record time and put him back able
to travel to Argentina, where I admitted him to the Sacre Coeur Institute, where I was the director, to study him in depth.
Year 2004. Cardiologist Carlos Benjamín Alvarez besieged by the media, who are investigating Maradona's health.
"I took some ventricular biopsies that I sent to the United States and there a friend colleague, Dr. Valentín Fuster, told me that Maradona had lesions caused by a compound called
cocaethanol
, which is
a mixture of cocaine with alcohol, very toxic to the myocardial fiber.
But it could be partially reversible, if the patient behaved. I'm not going to deny that every night, when I went to sleep, I thought:
'If Diego dies, I have to go live in Saturn, because they're going to kill me.' to kill
.' But we got through it."
He says that he had a "cordial but distant" relationship with Diego.
"We were dealing with you to avoid abuses. You were not an easy patient...
There are issues that I will not be able to tell, because they are suing me
, but you did tremendous things that I am going to take with me to the grave, it is a professional secret."
He assures that when he was discharged, at the end of 2004, "he was a violin."
And when they had to think about the future, a detoxification clinic, "
I proposed taking him to Canada because of his addictions.
I remember that Doña Tota and Don Diego, the parents that I also treated in my office, came and He told me:
'Doctor, please take him away from his friends, they are killing him
.' They knew well that the environment made it very difficult for their son."
Together with Maradona, in 2004, after Diego lost 20 kilos in a week.
In 2005, Maradona and his entourage decided to travel to Cuba to undergo rehabilitation.
"A destination that I opposed, because frankly it was not suitable for what the patient needed... I insisted on a clinic in Vancouver, which had very good references, because it was the place where, among others,
celebrities
recovered.
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, but of course, you have snow up to your waist and
the crowd around Maradona was going to have a bad time.
Guillermo Coppola? I want to believe that it did him good, he helped his friend, what do I know... After "At the request of Claudia (Villafañe), I tried to get him a visa to go to the United States, but the ambassador, very diplomatic, gave me the thumbs down."
Alvarez believes that "in Canada, where the doctors were waiting for him and the clinic had everything to get him through, there were great chances of recovering him. But
in La Pradera, in Cuba, it was absolutely shit.
Don't make me talk, I can't, they're going to send in
cana
... They passed me over, I mean his environment, and since then I lost track of him. In any case, already in 2004 it was known about his
significant neurological deterioration, which had started with brain injuries
, proven by studies performed at the Fleni clinic".
"The idiots go to the goal," Maradona told John Paul II when the Pope told him that in his youth in Poland he had been an archer.
He says that he felt "deep pain" when he found out about his death in 2020, "I already lived here in Uruguay and it was one of those news that makes your blood run cold. Through the media I was learning about his progressive deterioration in health. .. Over time I learned about the conditions in which, supposedly, they cared for him...
Poor Diego, he fell into the hands of improvisation
. Look, I know almost everything about cardiology, but the cardiologist who was with Diego did not have the slightest idea of who he was or of his existence.
He doesn't want to continue, he prefers to remember it with a smile.
An anecdote with Maradona?
"Back in 1987, Pope John Paul II invited Diego to the Vatican and at one point during the meeting, which was very warm and friendly, he told him: 'Look, Diego, I have great admiration for you, not only for how you play. , who is gifted, but because I was also a soccer player, I understand the game and
what you did on the field was worthy of a superman
.' Diego looked at him smiling and neither dull nor lazy asked him. 'In what position Was His Holiness playing?', to which John Paul II told him. '
Io sonno portieri in Poland.' 'Portieri?',
Diego returned sardonically. The excited Pope expected something more from Diego, that he would ask him about his qualities as a goalkeeper. , but Maradona replied: 'What a shame, you know, in Argentina the stupidest guy always goes to goal.' It was to die for, but the Pope understood it and died laughing."
How does it feel to save the life of a world figure like Maradona?
"Saving the life of some famous or anonymous patient
is what fuels my passion to continue training and practicing, 60 years
after having received my training at the National Hospital of Clinics with the best teachers of Argentine medicine. Maradona was a special patient, without no doubt, but it was one more."
Punta del Este. Special delivery
ACE