Letter to Dr. Royo from Giovanni Lanzoni, husband of a patient.

Published by ICSEB at 18 November, 2011

Querido amigo te escribo…

Dear friend, I write to you…
Dear Dr. Miguel Royo Salvador:
I would like to allow myself to call you simply Miguel. I am writing this short letter to you to express my gratitude and recognition, being one of the few lucky people in the world who have been able to meet you. I would like to speak not so much of your genius talent in the field of neuro-craneo-vertebral neurosurgery (it is not necessary, I would not even know how the use the adequate medical terms since I myself work in a completely different area to yours), but of your human gifts and qualities. I was (luckily) able to participate in an event in Trieste organized by the “Associazione Italiana Sindrome Arnold Chiari, Siringomielia, Scoliosi Filum Tomizzati” on Satuday 12/11/11 in the “Circolo Sottufficiali”, because me and my daughter were accompanying my wife, Misses Rita from Rovigo, who you had performed the Sectioning of the Filum Terminale surgery on in May this year. As you will remember, my wife suffers from a severe kind of adult scoliosis, and was suffering, a few years a ago, from a constant strong pain in the right arm and of a serious respiratory insufficiency with a lack of oxygenation of the blood. Now well, dear Miguel, after your surgery, the strong pain in the arm has almost disappeared, whilst the respiratory problem has improved notably, and, after a postoperative with many ups and downs, the values of the oxygenation of the blood (arterial blood gas) have currently returned to almost complete normality.
But as I said, in this letter I would like to underline, apart from your huge talent as a global neurologist and neurosurgeon, your human gifts and qualities, those of a normal person within reach of others.
After the meal organised at the end of the event, I had said good bye to my friends and acquaintances I headed to the bar of the “Circolo” to have a coffee, when you arrived, and drinking the coffee together, as old friends do, we kept on talking a little about my wife Rita´s case. To a certain question of mine you answered that my wife had also been lucky. Well, dear friend Miguel, you were mistaken: luck is like the faith in God; you have to look for it. We did look for it (through the information organs, the Internet, etc.) and we found you.
Thank you, dear friend Miguel.
I would like to consider this testimonial as a small tribute to your work and that of your extraordinary medical and collaborators team, and hope that all the Arnold Chiari and Syringomyelia patients that don´t know you yet will read this through the media, and especially those neurosurgeons from the “Civile” hospital in Rovigo that we asked for help before contacting with you, who a priori ruled out that the pain in the arm that my wife Rita was suffering from could have been caused by the Syringomyelia, and those specialist physicians in pneumology and pain management who spoke amazed of a miracle when considering the obtained results.
I finish, dear friend Miguel, thanking you once more, you and your team of doctors and collaborators, and I hope that we will have another coffee together in May 2012, when I will accompany my wife to Barcelona, to the Institute for her post-operative control visit one year in.
Rovigo 14/11/2011 Gianni Lanzoni