“Oh, beautiful woman! ”. With these words Sérgio Reis walked through the corridors of the Women’s Hospital “Prof. Dr. JA Pinotti – Caism at Unicamp. He was surrounded by people, including former player Dadá Maravilha, and presenter Pedro Leonardo, from the “Mais Caminhos” program on EPTV, as well as a series of journalists and technicians. Employees, doctors, patients and visitors to the hospital wanted to get to know the singer, who is almost two meters tall, up close.
The visit was part of the “Pink October” program, a breast cancer prevention campaign (see article). Sérgio Reis held hands with his wife, Ângela Márcia. He always remembered that the couple had also beaten cancer: he had melanoma, she had breast cancer. They went to Clinical Oncology, where there are more serious patients visiting each bed and responding to requests for songs, one of them “Tocando em Frente”, by Almir Sater.
Dona Isabel de Fávari, from Itatiba, asked famous visitors to go to the room where her daughter, Maria Regina, is. “I’ve been a fan of Sérgio since I was a little girl,” she confided. In the room where there were two other patients, the music continued a little longer. “We love them. I didn't even believe it. We have already prayed a lot for them. For Pedro, when he suffered the accident, we prayed a lot. Now I asked him to pass on the miracle he received to my daughter who is here fighting to survive.” Maria Regina smiled and also thanked him. “It was an immeasurable joy to welcome them.”
They went through Surgical Oncology, where women receive a diagnosis and are referred for surgery. Sérgio Reis sat next to a patient and talked for longer than the visit schedule allowed. From there they went to the radiology sector and the Caism lobby, where there was more conversation and singing. Sérgio Reis, federal deputy, spoke about politics. He said that if there are bad people, there are also a lot of serious people in Congress. Then he talked about cancer.
“Today I came to bring a little of my affection and my words, I brought my wife who was also a patient and had both breasts removed. It is a disease that affects not only the person but also the family, it is an uncertainty, but we cannot abandon ourselves” he said, and his wife added: “what I can say is that it is another problem in life, just another problem of life, that we will go through”.
The singer's presence in Caism's “Pink Outubro” campaign was in response to the request made by Dadá Maravilha. The former player's daughter, Raquel Araújo dos Santos Berti, works in the hospital's institutional relations department. “I learned about the story of these people at the hospital who fight to save lives, my daughter called me and I'm here making friends, I asked Sérgio Reis to come and he did”, commented Dadá, who also signed autographs and heard many “you gave a lot of joys for us”, in reference to his career with the Brazilian team, Atlético Mineiro or Ponte Preta.
More Paths
Pedro Leonardo's visit, accompanying Dadá Maravilha and Sérgio Reis, was due to the recording of the TV program “Mais Caminhos” on Caism, taking advantage of the campaign's theme. “We came to talk to the women, meet them and hug them. People come here with a battle and come out victorious”, commented the presenter.
For the hospital's executive director, oncologist Luis Otávio Zanatta Sarian, the visit and recording of the program increase the visibility of the hospital and the Unicamp brand. “These are people who are supporting Caism in both its parliamentary and artistic activities. We want to design our brand so that this benefits the growth of the hospital, as public resources are limited.” He recalled that the hospital is today the largest breast cancer care center in the interior of the state of São Paulo, where 480 new cases are treated per year.
