Genoa – “Genoa is like a puzzle in which we found pieces that fit together perfectly. I could say that we came here for many reasons, but the truth is that it was a choice dictated by the heart.” Valentina Mastroianni, 38, mother of Cesare Zambon, 6 years oldblind since the age of 18 months due to a brain tumor caused by neurofibromatosis, a rare disease that affects multiple organs, tells the Secolo XIX about a new chapter in his life.
Last June, she and her husband Federico decided to moving from Conegliano (Treviso) to Genoa with her two older children, Alessandro and Teresa, and her inseparable dog, the Labrador Joy, and the cat Stella. After years of protocol therapies and experimental drugs in various Italian hospitals, little Cece has been treated at the Giannina Gaslini pediatric hospital for two months.
«We are at the fourth cycle of chemotherapyCesare is fighting with all his strength and we with him. Doctors are trying to maintain a good quality of life with a less debilitating drug than others. This, in theory, should allow him to go to school in September,” says Valentina who shares the daily life of the disease on social media, an Instagram page followed by over 300 thousand people. Sharing to feel less alone without ever losing hope in the face of your child’s illness, one of the most difficult and unnatural tests you are called upon to face. Which, inevitably, gives another order to the scale of priorities in life: “Becoming a parent always involves great expectations, big plans. You never think that your child will be sick and for this reason I always remind everyone of the importance of being healthy.”
Despite the countless difficulties, the Zambon family decided not to lose heart, to continue to see the beauty in their days overwhelmed by the tsunami of the disease. Finding the courage is not easy, it requires commitment: “It’s like running a marathon that you don’t want to run and for which you are not at all prepared. But you have to do it. The hardest thing is that every time we have a finish line to reach, it gets moved. It’s difficult for this race to end, but we keep going.”
“We will dance above the fear, to the notes of a piano played by Cece, and we will arm ourselves with hope to continue fighting. We will love life just like our son teaches us, every day. Because Cesare’s story is not the story of an exhausting, unjust battle against a cursed monster. It is also this, but not only that. It is the truest love story I could write. It is the story of someone who, despite everything, chooses happiness with his eyes closed”, we read in an excerpt from the book “The Story of Caesar” (DeAgostini), in which Valentina talks about her son’s illness.
A world brought and shared on social media with a very popular page (Click here) where light and darkness, hope and fear meet: there are the small great conquests of Cesare who with his extraordinary strength, between tenacity and determination, leaves everyone speechless, the “no” moments, the worries and thoughts in the days of hospitalization in the pediatric hospital in Genoa, where Valentina says she found professional competence and extraordinary humanity.
Affection received inside and outside the hospital walls. Valentina, in fact, is keen to dispel that “widespread” idea according to which the Genoese are not very expansive: «We have found generosity, hospitality and many displays of affection. Gestures of extreme kindness from people I don’t know, from those who see me in trouble on the street with Cece and don’t hesitate to help me, or those who send me delicious croissants while I’m in the hospital. The Genoese are people with a heart.”
A new beginning for the Zambon family marked by a new job for dad Federico as director of a beach resort, the arrival for 13-year-old Alessandro in the Genoa under-14 youth team. But above all important friendships. A new chapter that Valentina has decided to tell in her second book “E volaremo sopra la paura”, published by DeAgostini, out on September 17 and already available for pre-order online. A text in which she talks about herself and the countless difficulties she has gone through in the last year: «In the second book I talk a lot about my past, about what has marked me but also about how fundamental and necessary psychological support is when dealing with a child’s illness and the impact it has on the family. We went through a really difficult time, we risked losing each other. But thanks to a therapeutic path we found each other again, we saved our family”, says Valentina. And if the future represents an unknown, the will to continue to find the beauty in life remains firm, even if it is uphill, between love and acceptance. With strength, resilience and a pinch of madness: “I cannot see our reality of pain as others do, with one foot I remain anchored to the ground but the rest of my body is on another planet. As long as there is hope there is strength”.
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