June 6, 202402:02
Hear
At the end of 1994, Elvira María Levy, who was 29 years old and had two small children (9 and 3 years old), began to feel a very strong pain behind her left ear that in a matter of hours turned out to be a lump.
Since her eldest son had had mumps, she says, at first she didn’t think it was important because she thought he had caught the disease. Although that lump did not grow, after a few days other symptoms began to appear: night sweats, fever and extreme thinness.
Since where she lived, Alvear, a small city in Corrientes on the coast of Uruguay, they did not have the specialists or the instruments and supplies to study it, she had to move to Posadas (Misiones).
There they performed the first biopsy and the result (Elvira does not remember precisely) showed that they had to do the same study again. “As the attention was not the best, I did not agree and returned to my city. Amazingly all the symptoms disappeared and I was back to normal. However, this did not last long because when summer arrived all the symptoms returned with more intensity,” she says.
On this occasion, Elvira decided to save time and directly traveled, along with her husband and children, to the city of Buenos Aires to be treated at the Naval Hospital. She was convinced that they would give her a diagnosis and that within a few hours they would all return to Alvear. Nothing more foreign to reality.
“After doing all the tests they told me that I had Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, cancer in the blood they translated to us. Everything is it got dark, we left my children with my sister and my husband and I returned to start treatment. “I don’t know if I was aware of what was happening or if I blocked the information.”
At just 29 years old, Elvira underwent chemotherapy for six months. After those sessions, she says, the results were not what she expected because during January and February 1995 she underwent a series of complementary chemo treatments. “My body hurt, but the soul hurt morehe tearing of goodbyes to the boys, boldly traveling by car when he had never driven in Buenos Aires. The economic situation (only her husband worked) and her uncertain future did not help at all.”
Elvira says that her greatest blessing was falling into the hands of Dr. Claudio Dufur, whom she defines as the best oncohematologist in the world, who not only answered all her questions, but also behaved in a very sensitive and empathetic way, just what she needed in those days of anguish, sadness and hopelessness. “He saw us so lost that he became in our lighthouse in the face of so much storm”.
However, in July 1996 they performed a bone marrow transplant because the second round of chemo had not given the expected results either. He was kind of last letter to defeat the disease, as she herself describes it.
He had to stay 40 days in the Bone Marrow Transplant Unit (UTMO). “The day I was discharged, I walked through that door and said to myself: ‘That’s it, I did it.’ In any case, I had to stay for a while in a hotel near the hospital with all the care.”
The moment in which he was reunited with his children in Corrientes is treasured in his heart, even though 26 years have passed. “We arrived in our red Duna, my sister was waiting for us with my nephews and my children whom she took care of like her own. Matías and Hernán got into the car and wouldn’t let me get out, I cried my life.”
During the following years Elvira tried to forget everything that had happened, she went back to work and tried to live every day to the fullest, as if they were the last of her life. This is usually very common in people who manage to resiliently go through the adversity that came their way.
However, in 2006, 10 years after the autotransplant, he was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma again. “I saw myself suffering all over again, I thought that I was not going to bear it. I hated my doctor, I hated myself, to all the world. Because I? ¿What had already happened was not enough? Hadn’t she learned her lesson? I asked to be left like this, without treatment until that God decided. My children were already grown, they wouldn’t miss me so much and I didn’t think I would be able to endure any more hospitalizations. Ignorance had taken over me for a moment, it was obviously the worst decision,” she confesses.
Luckily, she says, the doctors managed to calm her down and explained to her the importance of doing the treatment again to start a new stage in her healing.
“Thank God there were only a few chemotherapy sessions and it passed. And it’s been 18 years that I’ve enjoyed life every minute, trying in some way to recover what I lost. Most of all, I enjoy my grandson (three years old). I am privileged with life and I love living it.
