During his 38-day fight in the hospital against pneumonia, Pope Francis came so close to pneumonia at one point that his doctors thought about the end of the treatment so that he could die in peace, said the Pope’s medical team.
After a respiratory crisis on February 28, in which Francis almost suffocated his vomit: “There was a real risk that he may not have made it,” said Sergio Alfieri, a doctor in Rome Rome.
“We had to decide whether we would stop there and go there or go forward and drive with all kinds of medication and therapies to take the highest risk of damaging his other organs,” said Alfieri in an interview published on Tuesday Italy Corriere Della Sera.
“In the end we took this path,” he said.
The 88-year-old Francis returned to the Vatican on the Sunday after the most serious health crisis of his 12-year papacy.
On February 14, he was admitted to the Gemelli Hospital for bronchitis, which developed into a double pneumonia, a particularly serious illness for him because he had pleuritis as a young adult and removed part of a lung.
Credits Papsterkrankenschister
In his daily updates of the Pope, the Vatican provided an unusual amount of details during his stay in the hospital, including four “respiratory crises”, which included serious coughing fits, which were caused by restrictions in his airways and resemble asthma attacks.
Alfieri had previously said that two of the crises were critical and Francis put Francis “in the end of his life”. In the new interview, the doctor said that it was the Pope’s personal nurse who, after the vomiting episode, provides the medical team to continue with the treatment.
“Try everything; don’t give up,” came the message from Massimiliano Strappetti, the nurse of the Pope, as Alfieri was told.
“We risked damage to kidneys and bone marrow, but we continued and his body reacted to drugs and his lung infection decreased,” said Alfieri.
Another two -month rest period has been prescribed in Francis since leaving the hospital to heal completely. It was not clarified how much he will be seen in public in the coming weeks.
Alfieri told the Pope’s first public appearance since entering the hospital when Francis appeared at a hospital balcony on Sunday at a hospital balcony to greet the well -wishers on Sunday.
“I saw how he left the room on the 10th floor of the Gemelli dressed in white,” said the doctor. “It was the emotion to see the man back to the Pope.”
