Sammy Basso is taken to get some air. But that labored breathing wasn’t just tiredness.
In these last 24 hours there has been a lot of talk about a young man who has become a symbol of struggle and resilience for many of his peers, but not only. Sammy Basso he always said he wanted to savor life every moment possible and to the fullest, his conditions would not have allowed him to have broad life prospects.
“I can’t breathe,” he said at one point. An hour later, the mother found the lifeless body of her son in her arms. Sammy Basso was only 28 years old, originally from Tezze sul Brenta (Vicenza), he is passed away suddenly Saturday evening. A wedding was being celebrated in a restaurant in Asolo, in the province of Treviso.
It’s 11pm, Sammy Basso starts to feel ill, with the party coming to an end. Speaking to friends, he revealed that he had respiratory difficulties. It would have only been the beginning of a much more problematic and dramatic moment. Young Sammy was then escorted outside for some air. That labored breathing was not simply tiredness, but would prove to be a sudden and fatal attack.
Within a few minutes, Sammy Basso finds himself collapsed on the driveway of Villa Razzolini Loredan. The friends present desperately try to help him while waiting for the doctors to arrive. Every attempt to resuscitate him is useless, it seems that thecardiac arrest had the upper hand definitively. His heart had stopped beating.
Sammy Basso had managed to live 28 years with the progeria. We say “successful” because he is one of approximately one hundred people in the world affected by this rare disease which accelerates physical aging. The disease, for which he was at the time the oldest in age of all other known progeria sufferers in the world, leaves behind so many friends and acquaintances. From a patient, he had become a symbol of the fight against this pathology.
Sergio Dussin, the owner of the restaurant, tells of that tragic evening: “What has remained in my mind is the kiss of his mother, who kept him wrapped in a blanket in her arms”. Sammy Basso had received the prestigious ‘Paolo Rizzi’ journalistic award in Venice, in the “Environment and Society” category, recognition for his willpower and the inspiration he represented for many. That cursed evening, his friends, in tears, remained next to him until late at night. An immense void, but also a legacy of research, inspiration and knowledge of progeria.
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