"What is happiness?
It's not the money, it's not winning races either.
Happiness is time.
It is strange to see Nani Roma (Folgueroles, Barcelona, 1972) without a cap or helmet, stripped of his overalls, in reality a physical and emotional armor that defined a life of success.
No Spaniard had won the Dakar Rally until he did it on motorcycles in 2004. A decade later he twisted the feat by conquering the car race.
This year he will not participate for the first time in 26 years.
Nani, restless, walks through the corridors of the Vall d'Hebron Hospital.
It is difficult for him to separate from the medical team that has treated him for bladder cancer detected last March.
"These people perform miracles," he repeats.
He has reasons.
After undergoing chemotherapy sessions, Nani had her bladder removed and a new one made from a piece of intestine.
Only three months have passed since that operation.
"It hurt so much that one day I even collapsed on the bathroom floor."
Has your conception of happiness changed? When someone in a white coat tells you that you have a tumor... It changes your perspective on everything.
Cancer is a harsh word.
I remember that first moment.
I was with Rosa, my wife.
And when the doctor told me that she had cancer… [Snorts].
The seconds became very long.
She did it clearly.
Here they go direct.
And then, what I wanted to know was if that was going to kill me. What did they answer? That there was a solution because we are lucky enough to live in a country where there are wonderful professionals.
They warned me that it would not be easy, but that we would get out of it. The doctors were clear.
Could you also be with your family? It was different, especially with my parents.
They are older, they are 93 and 83 years old.
They come from that generation when someone had cancer, they left.
I told my three children the reality, that I had a tumor, but also that there was a remedy.
And that we would spend a few hard months.
But nothing more... I didn't want to exaggerate more than I should. Did you have the feeling that the people around you were going to suffer more than yourself? It always happens.
Suffering is different.
When you have a child that something happens to him, you suffer especially if you can't do anything.
When you can help, it's easier to digest.
And this cancer was something I had to go through on my own.
I have tried to get my family to lead the same life.
When I was in shit from the chemo sessions, when I couldn't even move... They couldn't do anything.
And I didn't want someone there petting me either.
It was a process that I had to go through.
I tried to get my family to make a living. Did you succeed? I think so.
Rosa had more trouble.
My two older daughters are already self-sufficient, and my 14-year-old son is pretty self-sufficient as well.
During chemo, when he was tired, he slept.
When he could, he moved me.
I left everything... [Nani's voice catches.
She controls emotions quickly.
With her gaze, she invites the journalist to continue asking] .Tell me about loneliness. The fact of having run the Dakar helped me a lot.
Especially on a motorcycle, one goes very alone.
Hours go by, days go by... Those experiences helped me get through this alone.
They helped me eat it myself.
The others couldn't do anything.
When you're having chemo, lying there, my family had to go on: go to school, to university, Rosa to work... What role does fear play? When you have a family, the fear is that something will happen to your children .
But, for me, I am not afraid.
My two older daughters are already self-sufficient, and my 14-year-old son is pretty self-sufficient as well.
During chemo, when he was tired, he slept.
When he could, he moved me.
I left everything... [Nani's voice cracks.
She controls emotions quickly.
With her gaze, she invites the journalist to continue asking] .Tell me about loneliness. The fact of having run the Dakar helped me a lot.
Especially on a motorcycle, one goes very alone.
Hours go by, days go by... Those experiences helped me get through this alone.
They helped me eat it myself.
The others couldn't do anything.
When you're having chemo, lying there, my family had to go on: go to school, to university, Rosa to work... What role does fear play? When you have a family, the fear is that something will happen to your children .
But, for me, I am not afraid.
My two older daughters are already self-sufficient, and my 14-year-old son is pretty self-sufficient as well.
During chemo, when he was tired, he slept.
When he could, he moved me.
I left everything... [Nani's voice cracks.
She controls emotions quickly.
With her gaze, she invites the journalist to continue asking] .Tell me about loneliness. The fact of having run the Dakar helped me a lot.
Especially on a motorcycle, one goes very alone.
Hours go by, days go by... Those experiences helped me get through this alone.
They helped me eat it myself.
The others couldn't do anything.
When you're having chemo, lying there, my family had to go on: go to school, to university, Rosa to work... What role does fear play? When you have a family, the fear is that something will happen to your children .
But, for me, I am not afraid.
and my 14-year-old son is quite so too.
During chemo, when he was tired, he slept.
When he could, he moved me.
I left everything... [Nani's voice cracks.
She controls emotions quickly.
With her gaze, she invites the journalist to continue asking] .Tell me about loneliness. The fact of having run the Dakar helped me a lot.
Especially on a motorcycle, one goes very alone.
Hours go by, days go by... Those experiences helped me get through this alone.
They helped me eat it myself.
The others couldn't do anything.
When you're having chemo, lying there, my family had to go on: go to school, to university, Rosa to work... What role does fear play? When you have a family, the fear is that something will happen to your children .
But, for me, I am not afraid.
and my 14-year-old son is quite so too.
During chemo, when he was tired, he slept.
When he could, he moved me.
I left everything... [Nani's voice cracks.
She controls emotions quickly.
With her gaze, she invites the journalist to continue asking] .Tell me about loneliness. The fact of having run the Dakar helped me a lot.
Especially on a motorcycle, one goes very alone.
Hours go by, days go by... Those experiences helped me get through this alone.
They helped me eat it myself.
The others couldn't do anything.
When you're having chemo, lying there, my family had to go on: go to school, to university, Rosa to work... What role does fear play? When you have a family, the fear is that something will happen to your children .
But, for me, I am not afraid.
[Nani's voice cracks.
She controls emotions quickly.
With her gaze, she invites the journalist to continue asking] .Tell me about loneliness. The fact of having run the Dakar helped me a lot.
Especially on a motorcycle, one goes very alone.
Hours go by, days go by... Those experiences helped me get through this alone.
They helped me eat it myself.
The others couldn't do anything.
When you're having chemo, lying there, my family had to go on: go to school, to university, Rosa to work... What role does fear play? When you have a family, the fear is that something will happen to your children .
But, for me, I am not afraid.
[Nani's voice cracks.
She controls emotions quickly.
With her gaze, she invites the journalist to continue asking] .Tell me about loneliness. The fact of having run the Dakar helped me a lot.
Especially on a motorcycle, one goes very alone.
Hours go by, days go by... Those experiences helped me get through this alone.
They helped me eat it myself.
The others couldn't do anything.
When you're having chemo, lying there, my family had to go on: go to school, to university, Rosa to work... What role does fear play? When you have a family, the fear is that something will happen to your children .
But, for me, I am not afraid.
Hours go by, days go by... Those experiences helped me get through this alone.
They helped me eat it myself.
The others couldn't do anything.
When you're having chemo, lying there, my family had to go on: go to school, to university, Rosa to work... What role does fear play? When you have a family, the fear is that something will happen to your children .
But, for me, I am not afraid.
Hours go by, days go by... Those experiences helped me get through this alone.
They helped me eat it myself.
The others couldn't do anything.
When you're having chemo, lying there, my family had to go on: go to school, to university, Rosa to work... What role does fear play? When you have a family, the fear is that something will happen to your children .
But, for me, I am not afraid.
The pilot Nani Roma, this week. DAVID RAMÍREZARABA PRESS
How did it all start? It was very fast.
I was at a presentation in Seville, on a Tuesday, of the Baja Andalucía rally.
And returning I noticed that my back hurt a little.
The next day I went to a hospital in Vic, and I called to see if a doctor could visit me.
My back ached.
People told me I had colic.
A kidney stone.
There they told me that it could be something similar.
That same day they did an ultrasound on my bladder, and when they saw it... Ugh.
You saw that it was something strange, for sure.
The next day, as there were no urologists there, I called Xavi Mir, my traumatologist friend.
He arranged a visit for me with a urologist in Barcelona.
At noon they did a CAT scan, and after eating the doctor told me that he had a tumor.
At the end of the week I was being operated on for the first time to do the biopsy.
The cancer was in a medium-low stage.
Luckily, the tumor covered the ureter that descended from my left kidney, and that caused it to hurt me. The pain may have saved him. Without pain, it would have come much later, and with the risk that the cancer would have spread.
Within gravity, we caught it in time. A question that is often repeated is: Why me? The first thing I did was that, ask myself why it had happened to me.
The doctor asked me if I smoked.
Do you know what I replied?
'If in my 50 years of life I have smoked a cigarette, it is already a lot'.
The only reproach I make to myself is not having given importance to the blood in the urine.
In the last Dakar, one day when I hit hard and my kidneys hurt a lot, I saw a little blood when urinating.
But it is that in the Dakar two years ago, too.
I thought then that it had been because of the blow... And the damage it had done to my back, to my neck.
He could only connect the blood to that.
If I had thought about it... But I can't change the past, no matter how much I think about it. you drive in the open air and the exhaust pipe is behind.
Inside cars... You're not always in contact with gasoline either.
And how many hours am I inside a car during a year?
I'm not 10 hours a day.
No one knows why.
Nor if he had had the tumor for a long time.
He touched me.
Like the one who never smoked and has lung cancer.
Why? How did you manage your emotions? The chemotherapy stage was very unpleasant.
I have never drunk, I have never taken drugs,
he had a clean body... He had never been ill either.
It is very bad when, suddenly, you feel bad all day.
When you have trouble walking.
He couldn't even.
Suddenly, everything stopped.
And I, who did 4,000 kilometers of bicycle a year, who was moving all day... Chemo for this type of cancer is very hard, but he did a good job.
In the last CT the tumor had disappeared.
After the operation I lost between seven and eight kilos. What consequences remain? When I built a new bladder, it is still small.
I have to go to the toilet many times.
It's the only thing I have for now.
But of course, it's all very recent.
It's only been three months since I had surgery.
The doctors are scared because of everything I've already done. Does it have to do with their willpower? And because I'm an athlete.
When I came to the Vall d'
Hebron for the first time I told the doctors that in September I had to be already in the car.
They thought he was crazy.
What did I do in September?
Get in the car. He hasn't missed a Dakar since 1996. This year he won't run it. It's more than half his life.
But I have learned to take things differently.
The human being is sometimes naive, donkey.
We think that if we don't do something the world will end.
And no.
Nothing happens.
I have run the Dakar 27 times.
And I won't be in the next one.
Not because I'm not well, but because of other stories.
Of course, having the goal of preparing for the race was very good for me.
When I was screwed, he helped me.
I am not one to give advice to anyone.
I have enough with mine.
But it worked for me to have a goal.
People who are sick should have it.
Whoever. You have been a winner.
When he suddenly faces the abyss,
What do you see? The drama was useless to me.
I have cried.
And so much that I cried.
In pain, after the operation.
And also for being screwed.
It was physical and emotional pain.
What they did to me was a miracle.
But when you enter an operating room for a seven-hour intervention, it is inevitable to think if you are going to wake up. Did it happen to you on the stretcher? Yes, of course.
I always asked the doctors about the probabilities of things.
I was not going to stay in the operation, but there was a certain percentage that it would not go well.
And you accept those things when you go to sleep.
But I have always been very positive.
I always believe that everything will go well in life.
Naive of me.
Throughout the illness he went day by day.
Knowing that there would be things that would go well, and others that would not.
Like in a race in the desert.
You go out so that everything goes well,
but even knowing that there will be times when you will puncture, you will break the car, you will get lost... Now I am cured. Do you dream? At 50 years old... Ugh.
I want to run the Dakar again.
Competition is the best thing that has ever happened to me.
Ask any sportsman when he quits.
That adrenaline you feel... It excites me.
Competing gives me life.
The medical team of the Vall d'Hebron Hospital that has treated Nani Roma, with a simulator of the Da Vinci robot with which the pilot was operated. DAVID RAMÍREZARABA PRESS
200,000 cases of bladder cancer in Europe each year
The Bladder Cancer section of the Vall d'Hebron Hospital, made up of doctors Carles Raventós, Albert Carrión, Fernando Lozano and nurse Natalia Pujala, has been a pioneer in Catalonia in intracorporeal bladder reconstruction using the Da Vinci robot.
This machine allows the removal of the bladder to be minimally invasive.
The incidence of bladder cancer in Europe is 200,000 cases per year (12,000 in Spain).
It is the fourth tumor with the highest incidence among men (behind that of the prostate, lung and colon) and the fifth in women, after that of the breast, lung, colon and uterus.
Diagnosis in the initial state allows a probability of survival of 80%.
It drops to half in more advanced stages.
"The main risk factor for bladder cancer, present in 80% of cases, is tobacco. Both active and passive smokers. In the case of Nani Roma, a healthy person with no toxic habits, this factor does not exist. Neither is age, because it is a tumor that usually develops after 60-70 years. His cancer is not common in young people like him," admits Dr. Lozano.
The same doctor points to another possibility: "The only risk factor that we have discussed with him is the issue of cars, of smoke from the exhaust pipe. They have been in contact for many years. Although Nani was in the passenger compartment of the vehicle, the contact It is minor. And when he competed on motorcycles he did it in open spaces. In any case, the only identifiable risk factor would be that. He has always been in workshops, in contact with engines, with combustion. That smoke is also toxic and is related to bladder cancer. Although it is impossible to establish a cause".
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