The 'Puma' spoke with Don Francisco about his spiritual experience prior to his transplant 1:04
(CNN Spanish) -
Don Francisco returns to international television with a 100% virtual production on CNN and a luxury guest: José Luis Rodríguez, «El Puma».
In the exclusive interview, the Venezuelan artist tells how it was the process to sing again after the delicate lung transplant surgery to which he underwent.
In this emotional conversation for
Don Francisco's
first program
: reflections 2021, the
singer says that, after three years of the surgery that gave him a second chance at life, what he wants most is to meet the family that fulfilled his wish of his donor and allowed that, as happened with «El Puma», other people can extend their lives.
This is part of the highlights of the interview, reflections of two friends who met in the 70s and now celebrate this new life of the Venezuelan singer.
Don Francisco explores the new life of «El Puma» after the transplant
Don Francisco: What has this quarantine meant for you this year?
José Luis Rodríguez, «El Puma»:
I would say more than a year.
In my case, because before the operation I was locked up with exams and things, waiting for the lungs that they would lend me - after the operation, also for a year in detention here and in this quarantine for another year.
So I have a master's degree in quarantine.
So look, we have realized that it is not necessary to have so many clothes, that you use almost a couple of them during you take off one and put the other on because you did not care and you just grab the one that is on top.
So clothes, not much… food, yes… television, of course.
The escape is the escape from ... isolating oneself from reality, but also finding out through television and reflecting a lot, a lot.
I have had enough meditations and what is the purpose of being here, of traveling with a body.
And the truth is that, if there is a purpose to travel here and power, that is, to serve in one way or another with the word, with music, with some advice, with experience, connect others who are waiting for organs, who want a transplant, you are fighting for your life, connect you with the person of with the right doctor.
All this makes me feel useful to society.
Don Francisco: I know that you wrote the book
Why Live
and you wrote it after receiving this transplant.
I have to tell a bit of history because I know you a lot also personally and I was with you with a tremendous tank of oxygen when you could practically no longer breathe and I realized that you came to this place to say goodbye, to say, like goodbye.
But I was always confident that this was not going to happen.
To the point that I did an interview of you when you were in very bad condition and I never showed it anywhere, except when later I was able to interview you again after the transplant.
What did you feel at that moment when life was leaving you?
José Luis Rodríguez, «El Puma»:
Notice that I want to acknowledge before all the people, the public that is watching us, your insistence on recording a program and putting up with it.
No, don't pass it.
Although your producers told you that you have to put it on the air, you said no, that rooster is going to come back.
You had an impressive faith that I would return from death itself.
So you waited patiently and then you did after the operation, that other talk show that was really a boost to my faith.
Sometimes you say that you are agnostic, but I think you have an impressive faith, you showed me by waiting for the right moment to be able to do both.
Interviews, spend it with the old lungs and with the new lungs.
Don Francisco: There were moments when all of us who were next to you at a table stopped because we felt like you were short of breath. What were you feeling at that moment?
José Luis Rodríguez, «El Puma»:
Well, at that moment, the last time I went to your house, you left me on those beautiful Shabbat that you do ... well I felt as if it was my last night with you and I said goodbye, but with a lump in the throat.
Because what I find most difficult, my dear Mario, is that detachment, how to loosen everything, detach ourselves from women, children, material things, friends, your profession, from so many things and detachment from the body, we are also soul , body and spirit.
So I was in that purpose and taking off mentally and spiritually just in case I had to go.
But God was generous to me and gave me more time, gave me another chance.
That is why the book,
Why Live
Because it tells me the question that everyone asks how, when, where?
Why and for what?
What did God save me for?
Why take me a little longer?
Don Francisco: What for?
José Luis Rodríguez, «El Puma»:
To reflect, to give the love that I didn't have time to kiss, that because of traveling so much I couldn't give advice, caresses, conversations with friends, with people from the public.
In other words, I was missing things and everything, I am missing things that are, I reserve them.
But those things, if God allows me, because I am doing them with this pause of this pandemic, because the world on earth will continue to revolve around the sun, that is, we will continue to meet our goals.
Puma reveals what it was like to breathe without help again 0:57
Don Francisco: Now, when I see you after the operation, recovery is difficult. I notice that you hardly spoke, but day by day you change. What do you feel when you wake up from this operation? When do you already have new lungs?
José Luis Rodríguez, «El Puma»:
My dear Mario, when I woke up and felt that I didn't need oxygen, it was such a wonderful thing.
Although I was intubated, I felt something ... the human being can go without drinking water, with 3 or 4 days without eating, fasting for 21 days or whatever, but without breathing for a minute, because oxygen is the breath of life.
So I could breathe without that device because I felt free even though I was tied up in a bed, I was in a tube and I just opened my eyes and thanked God because I was breathing without auxiliary oxygen, that is wonderful, that it is to live again, that is to give thanks to God.
That is a miracle that at my age because that team of doctors will take the risk, thinking that I could stay there in the operating room, because they took the risk at my age and God achieved the miracle for me.
Don Francisco: And did you ever think that you could sing again?
José Luis Rodríguez, «El Puma»: I
did feel that far away and it was difficult, I could barely articulate my voice, it was a very thin voice and that did cost me a lot to start from scratch.
How to learn to walk again, how to learn to speak again.
I know that Dr. Brozzi is not going to tell us who the donor is, if he is a woman or that man, if he is young, if he is an adult.
But I am really sure that I was not a singer because it took me a lot to get my voice back on track a little more or less.
Surgeon from «El Puma»: José Luis Rodríguez's recovery after transplantation surprised us
Dr. Nicolás Brozzi, surgeon who operated on José Luis Rodríguez «El Puma», spoke with Don Francisco about the double lung transplant that the singer underwent in 2017. The specialist details how the doctors were surprised by the speedy recovery of the also actor, businessman and producer.
Don Francisco: I say that it is José Luis is the only person in the world who sings with other people's lungs, that he is a professional singer. At that age I do not dare to give statistics, because maybe in another part of the world where I have not arrived or there is another person, but they must be very few in the world.
Dr. Nicholas Brozzi:
Is that so? Eh?
I can tell you that in less than five that I know in person there are three.
Nobody who has returned to sing professionally like José Luis.
The famous person who visited «El Puma»
Don Francisco: Many people visited you. Many people spoke to you. I don't know if I can ask you this question, but I do. They told me ... at some point when I was pretty sick in the hospital. A well-known singer, in a very private way, approached your bed. Luis Miguel, just to shake your hand and shake your hand.
José Luis Rodríguez, «El Puma»:
But Ricardo approached first.
Ricardo Montaner and Marlene were the first on the fourth day.
They were sitting and surprised me.
But that surprise visit that made my spirit very happy because I wanted to talk with him about 20 years ago and it had not been possible.
And this.
This person, this gentle boy, clothed himself with extraordinary simplicity, extraordinary humility.
It was also.
He found me in that hospital.
And it was only with one driver only.
And we were able to talk.
We were able to hold hands and chat what a long time ago.
Years.
I wanted to talk with him and God gave me the privilege of being able to have that conversation.
The return to the stages of «El Puma»
Don Francisco: For the artist, applause is the most important thing. What did you feel, José Luis, when the applause met you again? The first time you sing in public with other lungs, you feel like people are clapping you and chanting your songs. What is your feeling at that moment on stage?
José Luis Rodríguez, «El Puma»:
Dear brother, I had so many doubts.
I was afraid.
I had so many questions.
But on stage it's like magic.
When you put your foot on stage, even if you are tired, something revives you.
Something is an unusual adrenaline that one receives from the public or from the people, from what happens.
The lights, the music, everything, everything.
It is a component for you to really enjoy that moment.
Don Francisco: Where do you sing for the first time in front of the public, in what place?
José Luis Rodríguez, «El Puma»:
I think it was here in Miami.
May 16, 2017. No, not 2018.
Don Francisco: And you are in the dressing room. You are about to leave. Did you fix yourself? Did you put on the tux? Did you put your shirt on? This. What do you feel at that moment that you are entering? Are you scared? Are you worried?
José Luis Rodríguez, «El Puma»:
I repeat doubts, emotion, fear and insecurity.
Many things together, something that did not happen to me when one was full of faculties.
And are you sure of your voice, of your personality, of your physical strength also of what you are going to give to people?
Well, they asked me a long time ago, when I was out there in Latin America for press conferences, what was one of me contributing to society and I say look brother, I think you take away sports from a country, music and art.
There is collective suicide, you take away a soccer country, the soccer game and there collective suicides.
We are escape valves for our society.
People escape a lot, evade, get excited and travel wonderful paths through music and through art and through sport, of course.
Don Francisco:
And when do you feel that applause?
That first applause from the new lungs?
José Luis Rodríguez, «El Puma»:
Wonderful, wonderful, inexplicable.
It is as if one were another person, because that old man with the old lungs was no more.
But this other person is something so, so strange, Mario, that one feels that he has borrowed lungs, that he was another person, then there would be mental confusion.
There will be the lungs of that person who is in whom who really acts.
So mentally he has to put his feet on the ground and say well, it's me, José Luis Rodríguez, the puma who is going to serve people with, with, with emotion, with the song and take them through different emotional states.
The message for the donor's family and the invitation of Don Francisco
The Puma says he wants to meet the family of the donor of his lungs 1:55
Don Francisco: Now José Luis, I imagine that you don't know who donated those lungs, but I imagine that the relatives know that you sing with those lungs. Perhaps you would like to say something to that family, to those relatives, those close to those lungs with which you sing and breathe today.
José Luis Rodríguez, «El Puma»:
First, the person who left, who authorized that his organ is thus a way to extend the life of another person, of course, I fit in with that person and tell their relatives if maybe they know that I am the one with the organs or lungs of I don't know, or of her daughter, or of her son, of her husband, I don't know - Dr. Brozzi and the team of doctors know that.
I would like to know.
I have been transplanted for three years now and I am dying to meet these people who said yes, because the person who leaves the body can authorize their organs to be a donor.
But if the family says no, then that person dies.
And thank God that family said yes so that I was talking with you.
Don Francisco: What would you like to say to that family?
José Luis Rodríguez, «El Puma»:
I am infinitely grateful for having said yes to those, to those lungs so that I can continue to see.
And I think that same donor extended life to other people.
But God permitting, one day I will personally thank him and it is going to be a very, very emotional time for me.
I do not know if for them or what to bring them to my chest so that they feel the breath of that loved one that is inside me.
This sounds crazy, doesn't it?
But it is really I have borrowed lungs because someone from a family agreed for me to continue living.
Don Francisco: It seemed so important to me that we dedicate this program to promoting people to become a donor in those places where they cannot spontaneously be a donor, where they must give authorization to donate. There is a new opportunity and I believe that the people who are at home at this time are also thinking for me this is a new opportunity. This is the first program that I have just turned 80 years old. It is a new opportunity for me to be able to talk to people, to be able to communicate with people, to be able to speak with the doctor, to be able to deliver this information to people. For me it is very important.
Dr. Nicholas Brozzi:
Well, thank you for the opportunity to participate and to collaborate.
I would like to add to what you were saying, this is true, the importance of donating and, as José Luis well says, the families who are obviously in the pain of losing a loved one and finding the greatness of spirit to bring this opportunity of life to other people that at that time they do not know is extraordinary.
It is an act of greatness, of extraordinary spirit and on many occasions we see that it helps in some way to overcome the pain of losing that loved one who is leaving.
Don Francisco: José Luis, I would like to ask you about your pending dreams. What do you want from here on? What would your dream be? As the Argentine doctor says, what would the kid's dream be? The great dream, the one that you want to fulfill right now, from now on.
José Luis Rodríguez, «El Puma»:
Finishing the great race of life.
Having complied with the people that I owe something or word, feeling, love, anything else, I do not want to have debts with anyone.
Really.
Leave calm, at peace with my spirit, with my soul and dream that this is going to happen.
That the Earth was created to be inhabited.
But there are things that will continue to happen because we believe in it.
What is coming, what is happening and what is really going to happen with the earth and the human being.
Well, continue living as far as God intends me and be prepared physically, mentally and spiritually to take off.
Don Francisco: Doctor, what is your pending dream?
Dr. Nicholas Brozzi:
Look, one is fortunate to be able to fulfill oneself, it is what one chose and that these days is almost a privilege.
Bye thank you.
God has given me a beautiful family, beautiful wife and children.
More than continuing to help the people who were there, the patients who were there, the vocation is really this.
And see that many opportunities are generated for.
For the new generations to come.
That a little more sense is beginning to be made in this crazy world.
Don Francisco: Sure. Well, I too have a dream pending now. And what is doing these 10 programs here on CNN and being able to summon all my friends, acquaintances, great professionals to reflect on life, reflect on what we are experiencing in this pandemic. So I thank you for being with me on this first show. Thank you very much, José Luis. Thank you also Dr. Nicolás Brozzi.
Watch
Don Francisco: reflections 2021
from this Monday, February 15 at 9 PM (Miami time) on CNN en Español.
We invite you to the social networks of CNN in Spanish and also of @DonFranciscoTV.
This Tuesday: Luis Fonsi and Isabel Allende.
Don Francisco The Puma Transplant