Yesterday I spoke again with Ricky Rubio. Every time I do it, it leaves me speechless.
On one occasion, at the Institut Guttmann, I saw him sit in a wheelchair to play basketball with a group of physically disabled people. In another, at the Sant Pau hospital, he presented a project to, through virtual reality, make small creatures – any of our children – relax to enter the tube and undergo radiotherapy without having to be anesthetized.
The man is a basketball star, multiple champion; and yet he prefers to talk about humanity
–And those programs, are they still going forward?
–There we continue –he answers me–. We have taken the virtual reality project to Cleveland and Denver. If before we had to put 80% of children from two to six years old to sleep, now only 20% are anesthetized.
Ricky Rubio is a basketball star, champion of everything. And yet, he refuses to talk about himself. He prefers to talk about the rest of humanity. This is the story of a talent who had lived in paradise until 2016, which is when he lost his mother, a victim of lung cancer, and who, since then, has not woken up a single day without thinking about her.
(…)
Eight years have passed since Tona Vives left, and in this time Ricky Rubio has not stopped designing strategies to make this world a better place (a better place, above all, for those fighting cancer).
Ricky Rubio during his last stage at Barça
Today, the Ricky Rubio Foundation, an altruistic entity, summoned me to the La Plana municipal pavilion, in Badalona, to talk about the Lungfit program.
The underlying idea?
–Instruct oncologists, nurses, radiologists, physical trainers and, above all, lung cancer patients: scientifically demonstrate to them that practicing sports helps them in their fight against the disease – says Ricky Rubio. In our pilot tests we have already seen improvements in patients, physical and emotional improvements.
The man speaks and his surroundings nod, because this is a project that he shares with the Catalan Institute of Oncology of Badalona, the Duin gym chain, AstraZeneca and the Spanish Association of Lung Cancer Patients (AEACAP).
–When my mother died, a first emotional part developed in me. But when I became a father, I understood that everything I do must be focused on how I would like this world to be for my children. I have left behind the innocence of “it doesn’t matter to you.” Now I feel like I have more responsibility.
(And while Ricky Rubio speaks to us, Óscar, the instructor, leads the session of the patients who have put on their tracksuits and, cheerfully, jump and run around on the pavilion’s parquet).
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