It’s 11am on Monday January 30th and Marcello Longobardi He’s sitting in the waiting room at Mercy Hospital in Miami. when suddenly, have déjà vu. He is waiting for the results of a computed tomography that his wife Laura is undergoing after a bicycle accident and a clear image comes to mind: “It’s Happening Again”.
He remembers himself. In his memory he appears collapsed on the seat of another waiting room, about ten years ago and in Buenos Aires. It appears there. AND also awaiting the outcome of a CT scan, but to which the son underwent Ignacio, 20 years old (today he is 30), who suddenly lost his balance and they suspect he may have a tumor in his head.
At the moment, the doctor comes out and tells him that Nacho is healthy. And then, feeling a heavy worry off his shoulders, Longobardi understands the value of lifeof the intangible, and of the He invites Ignacio and his girlfriend, Catalina, to eat pizza in Palermo.
jjust when he’s there, Fabián De Sousa, director of Radio 10, calls him to announce his dismissal from the station. So he, while watching his smiling son and daughter-in-law tasting a mozzarella, doesn’t doubt it for a second and replies without filters: “She sucks an egg.”
“That memory came to me, like it was happening again”now tell clarionten years after that tense day at the Fleni hospital and after being disaffected by the environment commanded by Cristóbal López.
It’s February 2 and it’s been three days since someone ran over his wife on the streets of Miami and he feels like in that moment: Sometimes we humans focus on things that just don’t make sense.
“These episodes mobilize everything. Everything. It’s amazing. I’m in that process, which is in development, have you seen?”he asks on the other end of the phone.
-Why?
-Is that you say “wow”, one is worried about minor things. And that this (because of the collision with his wife) was a lucky accident, imagine an accident with less luck. I am aware that the truth was that we had many spellings. It could have been a tragedy.
-And what do you think?
-That’s with life, with things, with bullfights, with work, with CNN, with the whore who gave birth to him, that the radio, that the thing, that the TV, that the host… One is preoccupied with a bunch of issues that you later realize you have a list of issues that don’t matter.
Marcelo Longobardi, a phone call and the worst feeling: “I thought he was dead”
-What happened? How did your wife get hurt?
-First I would like to tell you something. Laura had an accident many years ago in which she tore the ligaments of a crayfish. One in a million cases that surgery goes wrong. And so it happened: instead of fixing his knee, they made it worse. This has implied that Laura has been trying for a long time to recover the mobility of her leg without success. Then one day she thought of riding a bicycle.
-To what extent was it affected?
– His knee was immobilized, he couldn’t even go down the stairs. So he became a cyclist to see if he could finally regain knee mobility after a group of kinesiology treatments failed. And it worked. And cyclists are a little compulsive, see? Like golf or tennis players. So Laura has become an important cyclist, she has a high level. Run mountain races.
-And were you running a race when you had an accident now?
-No, I was joking here in Key Biscayne. I didn’t run or train. He had been out cycling for a while in the morning. And we don’t know who hit her from behind. Her trainer, a Venezuelan cycling champion from Florida, studied the bike and concluded that she was hit from behind at the speed indicated by Garmin gauges and the bike’s mark on the rear tire.
How did you find out what had happened?
-Someone called me on the phone and said “hi, are you Marcelo Longobardi? Your wife just had an accident, she is in front of the Mast school in Key Biscayne”. Laura had amnesia for basically 20 hours, so I assume (what happened), because the guy is calling me from Laura’s phone, i.e. I didn’t answer an unknown phone. I saw the call and it was Laura, but it was this Galician. I heard screams and quilombos.
Did he tell you anything else?
-No, he just told me: “Here’s Laura, your wife, who had an accident and is in a similar place”.
-What was the first thing you thought when you heard someone else talking to you on your wife’s phone?
– That he was dead. Obviously cyclists have serious accidents and maybe not deaths, but he had been in a serious accident. I thought he had been hit by a car, as cyclists often do. She had been run over and was seriously injured as a result of a car and bicycle accident, which of course I cannot determine.
-Why?
-I didn’t have time to file a police report, which the hospital asked me to do. He hasn’t given me time yet. I was busy with the doctors, with the MRIs, with the girls, with the school, you know? But in the end I have to go and see, if necessary, how the accident went.
Were there no cameras there?
-Yes, it is full, of course. Here the power goes out and the firefighters arrive. But he didn’t give me time, until yesterday at noon he was busy with the hospital and the neurologists.
Let’s go back to the call. How did the Spaniard know he had to call you?
-It is clear that Laura was not so unconscious because she doesn’t remember, and Ramón Leiguarda (the neurologist following the case from Argentina) told me that she will never remember it, but he also gave the phone to that person who we not knowing who he is and said “call that”. He has no way to rebuild it. Laura also didn’t remember the hospital or who I was.
Amnesia, the hospital and the phone call that didn’t arrive
“The problem of amnesia is amazing. It’s like your wife comes home and says, ‘Who are you?’ It’s something extraordinary because you realize that a person doesn’t have a fucking clue about anything,” she explains from Miami.
And he continues with his story: “When I arrived at the scene, an ambulance had brought her. Since Laura has, like all cyclists, a bracelet with an emergency number, they called there. But there is the number of a friend of ours from the USA. My number isn’t there because I’m usually on the air and if there’s an incident and I’m recording I can’t answer the phone. From the ambulance they called Laura’s friend whose name is Andrea, and he told her “We are going to Mercy Hospital”.
-After the pass?
-They hospitalized her urgently. From Monday at 8 or 9 in the morning until 7 in the afternoon in a very injured state, with many marks on the body and totally amnesiac. He never lost consciousness. Neurologists here (in Miami) have explained to me that this is normal. But he lost his memory for 20 hours.
-What was he telling you?
-“Marce, what time is it? And what am I doing here? And who are you?” And then again, “and what time is it?” I had hours of absurd conversations with her, the phenomenon was very interesting. I went to the hospital emergency room and the first thing I saw was that she had no broken bones and that she could talk. She was in emergency until 7pm on Monday. There they scanned his head and checked everything.
-And what did they tell him?
-The first thing I get from an emergency doctor is: “In principle, there is nothing in his head, but I think he has a neck injury.” That was ruled out the day after they had a spine and neck scan and of course a head CT scan. This proved that he had no internal injuries, which was the most serious of all. They explained to me that amnesia was basically logical in the face of such a shock. Shelooks told me that he will never remember (what happened), that even if he makes the most commendable effort, he will never remember it because your brain erases it. So there’s no way.
-When were you discharged?
-She was hospitalized until yesterday (Wednesday) noon after a huge mountain of checkups.
-In a common room?
-Yes, he didn’t come to therapy. The boys assessed that he had nothing in his head.
-How is he now?
-Sleep. Eh… It’s okay, it’s okay. Let’s see, while I was in the ER suffering from amnesia, I was doing pretty well. The problem was the next day the effects of the shots started. She’s all scratched up, she’s got a shoulder that looks like an apple. Terrible. Now she is much better because she is at home. That tragedy face, haggard, messed up, left him. But her left arm is all wrapped up, she has an injured knee and a natural headache. But she doesn’t take any special headache medications, just ibuprofen or acetaminophen.
-The only thing left is to rest?
-Yes, I took a picture of him when we left the hospital yesterday at a blackboard. The characters who intervene, doctors, nurses, neurologists, what do I know, you can see that they go to look at the blackboard when it’s time to act. When I left I took a picture of it and it said: “Tylenol Medication (herein known as Paracetamol)”, with which I quietly walked away. If he only accepted that, it was because his conditions weren’t so dramatic.
-How are you?
-When there is a crisis, I take action. I don’t jump out the window. Laura can’t cook, she can’t do anything. Total rest. So I play the mother, the cook, I go to the dry cleaners. All. At the moment you do not realize what is happening. It wasn’t trivial, but there are more serious things.
Why do you think it was saved?
-For the helmet. If I hadn’t, my head would have been broken. The helmet saved her.
HAS
Source: Clarin
