Damián Blas Vives is a man of culture, a love that was born when, when he was just four years old, he surprised his parents by reading. Since then he became a voracious reader and during his childhood and adolescence I only asked for gift books. That is why it is not strange that he has worked for more than two decades at the National Library, where he is Director of Cultural Policies and Management.
However, the current situation has Damián on the ropes, who, aged 42, has been hospitalized for a month at El Cruce Hospital, in Florencio Varela, where a tumor was removed from his jaw in early January and a titanium prosthesis was placed, but weeks later he was hospitalized again for an infection in the healing. For pandemic times, it is a risk patient: diabetic, obese, with two episodes of pneumonia in recent years and imminent cancer treatment, The Covid vaccine is urgent. But…
Since you live in the city of Buenos Aires, the category to which you belong, “Adults between 18 and 59 years old with risk factors”, ranks fifth in the priorities, behind health personnel, adults over 70-80 years old, adults over 60 years old, and personnel from the armed forces, security and prisons. “They have not finished vaccinating those over 80 years old and there is talk that there are few vaccines, imagine my situation, it is really complex“writes Damien.
Damián Vives (42), interned at Hospital El Cruce, in Florencia Varela. He appealed to the Ombudsman’s Office to request a priority vaccination shift.
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Yes, writes Damien, because due to the infection that has him mistreat cannot speak, chew or swallow. When the pain gives him respite, when he does not have a fever, when he is without the effects of clonazepam, which allows him to rest from time to time, this editor of the Evaristo Cultural label corrects with his laptop pending works that have accumulated since he goes through this “unexpected gale that shook friends and strangers“Strange because from the world of culture, displays of affection raised his spirits.
He describes that the tumor was diagnosed in December, he was intervened in January and he must undergo radiotherapy no later than May, when the operation will be four months old, “of otherwise the rays would not work and the cancer could return. For all this, the doctors ask me to get vaccinated, because my health situation I would not endure a Covid contagion. Moreover, they told me that if it is with Sputnik it will be better because the ray treatment, it seems, attenuates the effectiveness of some of the vaccines, in some cases to the point of rendering them useless; but the Russian is still highly effective“.
Damien says that he has ups and downs, that “the stay is getting tough and very long.” Sometimes he is calm, diving into his world of writing and reading in the hospital room: “Luckily my sister brings me books every week and now I am embarking on Japanese stories.” Other times his current affairs and that of the country have him taken hostage. “To think that everything was born with a phlegmon that a dentist checked, that he referred me to a stomatologist, that he ordered a biopsy and … get out! “They took out the right half of my jaw”.
“What makes me sadder and I experience it as a personal frustration is the enormous cultural failure. It is striking that the common citizen does not realize that everything is wrong,” says Vives.
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Contained, respectful and measured, Damien masks his despair. “I am fearful for the complications that may arise … And the truth is, I can’t believe I’m going through this and above right now, “he slides and makes it known that he tries not to be so aware of the news about the few vaccines that arrive or are delayed,” because it squeezes my chest. ” And he points out that “I accidentally found out about this 18-year-old intern (Stefanía Purita Díaz) who vaccinated her and I find it as pathetic as the thousands of cases that occurred in other districts“.
This type of perks for being a militant alter Damián, who he does not want to politicize with his illness and that he is awake for one in the morning. “They did everything wrong on both sides, everything wrong. But what makes me sadder and I live it as a personal frustration is that the common citizen does not realize that everything is wrong, no matter what political color you have. I see people bewildered, without understanding their rights, anchored in a petty individualism. “
The messages between Damien and Clarion they take days. He answers when he can, when the vertigo that surrounds him gives him respite. “All this landscape does nothing more than make me feel like an asshole, and regret a lot of decisions that I have made throughout my life. If the Covid does not kill me, I will have to reorder myself and begin to put aside an idealism that does not correspond to the reality of society“.
Other times not so distant: Here with Jean-Pierre Léaud, the French actor Truffaut’s fetish, who was the baby of “The 400 blows”.
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I would rather talk about literary contests or graphic novels than about their clinical condition, which today is delicate. “I need the vaccine for the ray treatment, which will be daily and outpatient, and they will lower my defenses a bit, in addition to the fact that it implies two trips (by taxi or bus) to a medical center where everyone who is there will have the same two trips per day, with what that means. The issue is not that it has more chances of contagion but, in the face of contagion, less chances of surviving it, “he explains.
Admits the extra stress of vaccination uncertainty, “a headache greater than the illness itself“, he points out on WhatsApp. As said, he is hospitalized in the province of Buenos Aires, but he is from the Capital and the City replied that”vaccination is not planned for cases like mine, that there is no option and no type of exception is contemplated in this regard. I find it strange, showy and immoral. Time is running out and it threatens me. “Medical personnel come in to attend to him and carry out new studies.” We follow her, “he excuses himself.
A couple of hours go by and he reconnects, lets it be known that he is “anesthetized”, but that he can move his fingers to type. “What confuses me a bit is that recently the executive director of the Comprehensive Medical Care Program, Carlos Javier Regazzoni, publicly stated that the priorities to access vaccination against Covid-19 should be oncology patients with active cancer, diabetics, obese, patients with COPD, and cardiac. And I fulfill the first three options “.
According to the website argentina.gob.ar/coronavirus/vacunacion, the Public Vaccination Monitor reports that until March 24 192,375 people between 18 and 59 years old with risk factors received the vaccine. “Surely they are from all over the country except the city of Buenos Aires. It must be emphasized that the city has the largest volume of the elderly population and health personnelNot so the rest of the country, so we do not have availability, given that the totality that the Nation has given us was for these sectors that have not yet been completed, “they explained to this medium from the Health area of the Buenos Aires Government.
In Córdoba, in a cultural event, together with personalities such as Juan Sasturain, Néstor Ponce, José María Gatti, Javier Chiabrando, Orlando Van Bredam and Ramón Díaz Eterovic.
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“Today our focus –-continued- is to finish vaccinating health personnel and the elderly and thus continue with the order of priorities, that is why within those 192,375 residents of CABA will surely not be found, because the political decision that has been made is to follow the risk stratification, applying one hundred percent of what is received to those segments. For now the available vaccines are already assigned. We will see to the future “.
With this panorama, says Damián, “it became clear to me that it was not me who did not find the mechanism or where to start the process, but this reality of thousands had not been contemplated. That is why I decided to write to the Ombudsman’s Office, because I really believe that my rights are being violated, moreover, the supreme legal good which is the right to life “.
As he could find out Clarion, this administrative entity already made a formal request last Thursday addressed to Minister Fernán Quirós “in which the patient’s problems are described and it is recommended that it be taken into account for vaccination “, says Pablo Mazzolli, Health Director of the Ombudsman’s Office.” Yes we must admit and I give you the right, that City is proceeding according to priorities, which are the health personnel and the elderly “.
Mazzolli makes it known that, as part of a control body, he is behind many cases like Damian’s, “but We cannot draw water from the stones, if there is no availability, what can we do? Just trust the openness and receptivity of Dr. Fernán Quirós and his team to try to solve the problems that arise. “This Tuesday is the deadline to give an answer.
Contact with Damián Vives lasted about ten days, during which time the editor gradually improved.
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We return to Florencia Varela. “Relatively calm” returned after a chest x-ray for severe back discomfort diagnosed pneumonia. “They were days of tension, imagine if the original problem is complicated and this will mean a week or two more, interned,” he suggests his downturn but orally. Little by little, with discomfort, he can utter a word, “in that aspect the pains have eased.”
And in a more complicit tone, and tired of his new normal, he confesses that he misses “a certain freedom of movement that I had in my house, the piano lessons at Zoom and my libraries”, although he estimates that in this month he read about ten books. Also imagine going back to eating by mouth, something that had started in the first weeks of February … “And I confess that I long for some peace of mind for planning projects. I had started to prepare a book on Japanese culture, which even in the midst of this tsunami, I promised to finish. “
AS
