The flour hangs in the air like snow. Thick, white, everywhere. On the floor, on the shelves, in the hair of Stanisław Nowak, who for forty-five years has been getting up at three in the morning to bake bread for his district. He is seventy-two years old, but his hands – wrinkled, covered with scars from burns – move with the precision of a surgeon.
A Doctor’s Unwavering Dedication
“I simply did my duty,” Mariarosaria Sestito says with the calm of someone who, for 45 years, has learned that saving a life is not a heroic act, but a natural consequence of the profession she chose. Yet, it was not an ordinary day. January 7th is one of those dates that are marked in red on calendars: it is the day she turns seventy, the day she was supposed to close her clinic for the last time and begin her retirement. Instead, on that very day, the family doctor found herself in an ambulance, next to a patient in critical condition, still making the difference between life and death.
The Critical Call
The man, just over fifty, frail, diabetic, and a smoker, had already been examined on January 5th. “I had detected a compromised respiratory situation,” she recounts, “and suspected bronchopneumonia. I immediately started therapy and prescribed an X-ray.” The examination showed no serious complications. The day of Epiphany passed peacefully, and things seemed to be getting better. The next day, a new call came: “I don’t feel well.” The man asked for help, and Mariarosaria Sestito returned to the patient’s home. His oxygen saturation was at 74: a number that left no room for doubt. With those parameters, life was at risk. “I immediately alerted 118 for a code red.” When the ambulance arrived, however, there was no doctor on board. “They asked me to go with him. I couldn’t leave him alone.”
A Race Against Time
During the journey, maximum oxygen and emergency cortisone were administered. The patient arrived alive at the emergency room and was later transferred to another hospital. “He is still hospitalized, but under control.” And that, says the doctor, “is the first thing that matters.” That day would have been her first day of retirement, had a regulation not allowed her to request an extension until she was 72. The formal response from the ASL had not yet arrived. “I chose to stay anyway. You don’t abandon patients when they need you.” Ironically, at that very moment, an email authorized the extension for forty days, the time needed to cover shortages and ensure the handover to new doctors.
A Lifetime of Service
“I’ve been a doctor for 45 years. Emergency doctor, hospital, coronary unit, then general medicine,” she says. “I’ve always been reachable: I have three active phones.” And she dismisses criticisms about unavailable general practitioners: “We work every day until eleven at night.” Her story begins in Naples, with her graduation in October 1980. A month after the Irpinia earthquake: “We were called to the camps set up in schools. People were disoriented. The presence of doctors gave them security.” It was there that the idea of proximity medicine matured, “with the patient being a person, not a number.” She has two children, one a doctor like her, both living abroad. “They made broader choices.” She, however, stayed. Until the last day. Or at least, until someone, on the other end of the phone, still needs to hear her say: I’ll be right there.
Source: https://napoli.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/26_gennaio_11/napoli-dottoressa-di-base-non-va-in-pensione-cosi-ho-salvato-la-vita-a-un-paziente-22ef924f-554a-41e1-998f-28f6c0818xlk.shtml
