"Diego does not sleep, he is in a coma": the story of the young Uruguayan doctor who saved the life of Maradona in Punta del Este

"Doctor, there is someone on the other end of the line who is asking us to lend him a device to measure the pressure.

–Hi, I am Dr. Jorge Romero. Can you tell me what's going on?

-Aca, Guillermo Coppola. I am with Diego Maradona, who sleeps two days ago. We can not wake up.

–But if he sleeps two days ago he does not sleep, he is in a coma.

They spent 19 years but the doctor Jorge Romero still remember in detail the conversation that he had with Guillermo Coppola when the employer contacted the Polyclinic La Barra, Uruguay, to ask for help Diego Maradona.

The calendar marked January 4, 2000. At that time, Romero was only 28 years old and had been received a month ago ("In fact, I signed the title on December 16") and it was his fourth day of work in this room. near Punta del Este. Even after leaving his hometown, Montevideo, he had nowhere to go. "I slept on the floor of Policlínico, it was my first week there and I was waiting to work many hours to earn money and to be able to rent something" , recalls the doctor, in an exclusive interview with Téléshow.

In Buenos Aires it is registered Blessed dream, the series that will tell the story of Diego Maradona and will be produced by Amazon. While keeping an absolute secret, it was learned that this hospitalization would cost Diego Maradona almost life during the first season, which will be interpreted – at different stages of his life – by Nicolás Goldshmidt, Nazareno Casero and Juan Palomino.

And at the time when Romero had received this surprise call in which, according to Coppola, the former footballer had not woken up. Upon hearing his story, the doctor tried to make it clear to the businessman that Maradona should be treated "with much more than a simple measure of pressure". "He told me to go there as safely as possible," recalls the professional, "I grabbed my briefcase, got in my car and drove it." 23 km to the farm where they were. "

Romero arrived around one o'clock in the afternoon at the farm of the Argentine businessman Pablo Cosentino, located in the spa Jose Ignacio. "Less than 10 seconds after my arrival, I found strange situations. We could say that Diego had not been there, but that they had put it before my arrival", says about the annex in which was the former footballer." This was not the main house of the ranch ".

The doctor states that Maradona was lying on a wicker chair, dying. "Beside there was a person who was sleeping; Guillermo woke him up and I've checked Diego. I had a high blood pressure crisis and a ventricular arrhythmia. In addition, he stopped breathing for five or six seconds. He was very serious seriously. He was dying!"

A kind of negotiation was started with Coppola, who flatly refused that Diego be interned. "The press is very difficult, so Maradona lives or dies with you", the representative of The 10. "He said it half jokingly and half serious …", says the doctor who, after an arduous conversation, could convince him that it was essential to move him. "If we did not interned, he died in a few hours. We could not wait for an ambulance because it would take a lot of time, and we did not have the time"

His little doctor experience fueled Romero's disbelief, almost as much as the unexpected circumstance that this dying man was the most famous man in the world … "I could not believe what was happening. paper that says they're taking over and I'm leaving, but I thought the media would own: & # 39; Maradona dies for a young doctor … & # 39;. And then I stayed"

After taking Coppola back to his senses, an unusual new conversation ensued. "Well, we take it!" Acquitted the business man, "but before I go to bathe. I am a public figure, I can not go out alone. Knowing himself with the lost time, Romero sought to gain precious minutes: while Coppola was in the bathroom, he performed resuscitation maneuvers on Maradona's body. "It was an eternity," he laments. Even today, this country doctor, who from the age of 16, was working in the sectors of social exclusion. "I ended up in mud farms with more confinement than there was … Diego was dying and no one really understood what was going on"

Maradona, Coppola and Romero went to the hospital in a van, after two other people helped the former player (who was then significantly overweight) in the vehicle, still unconscious. "But when we got in the truck, one of them disappeared," recalls the doctor, surprised.

The businessman was driving, in the pbadenger seat was a collaborator; and back, the doctor and his famous patient. "I had work and Guillermo asked me to take off my t-shirt so as not to attract attention. I had to stay in leather while I still controlled Maradona and called my boss to warn him that we would go to Sanatorium of CantegrilAnd that they are waiting for us with a stretcher ".

In the middle of the journey, about thirty kilometers, the businessman returned to the doctor for descolocó: he stopped to load naphtha. "Diego was unconscious and died and Coppola made us stay 15 minutes at a gas station".

"When we arrived at the sanatorium, everyone was waiting with a smile. Nobody knew about the seriousness of the situation!", highlights. "Bring a stretcher now!"he asked, "totally alarmed". "Ah, is that for all that?", the head of the institution in which Maradona was hospitalized in intensive care unit was surprised, where he was treated by "the best cardiologist", according to Romero.

Once the news was made public, the journalists' headquarters began for Romero, who was also scheduled to appear in court for a case that had been opened after the drug discovery in Maradona's body. The badysis showed that there was cocaine hydrochloride in the blood and urine of the former football player. In addition, it was learned that drug use had resulted in a hypertensive crisis and ventricular arrhythmia.

"Diego is a bit annoying because he wants to go there, he asks for food and, fortunately, he looks physically deflated, these are good symptoms," Coppola told reporters, attempting to minimize the situation, and just before entering the police department. to testify – what's going on for the Fiestas he ate a lot of roasts, he made some inconvenience and, as he is also overweight, he made this peak of hypertension"

Romero spent six hours recounting his day's experience while agents suspected the presence of someone who was delivering the drugs to the farm, because in the plane that drove Maradona to Punta del Este, no narcotic was found: "I told them what I had seen: what happened was in another side because the place where I found Diego was clean. That's why I say that they had put it the before my arrival. "

After his statement, Romero was subjected to a reconnaissance cycle in which he noticed the presence of Coppola, the two men who were on the farm, but said: "Is there one missing". "How is it missing?" Asked the authorities. "Yes, the one who slept next to me when I arrived", says the professional.

The doctor refers to the Argentine publicist Carlos Ferro Viera, who was later designated as the person responsible for providing the drug to Maradona during the Fiestas. By the time the former footballer was interned, the businessman left Uruguay on a private flight from Laguna del Sauce.

It happens that, in his statements, the representative of Maradona and the other people who were on the farm during these days of excess, they failed to reveal the presence of Ferro Viera. For this reason, Coppola was prosecuted by the Uruguayan courts for false testimony.

Life after the miracle. With Diego in charge of the doctors of Sanatorium Cantegril, Romero resumed his work at the Polyclinic of La Barra, which was then his home. The same week he applied for a bank loan to rent a house. "I was still sleeping on the sanatorium floor. The only thing that mattered to me was to make money the first week to rent a roof. And it amused me he talks about the harbadment he felt from the press. They called me from all sports channels of Argentina and even Italy. I am discreet, I do not like the show and the last thing I wanted was to lend myself to that. I already broke the balls with all that"

And so, he took a distance. "I did not go to see Diego because I had to work, I was very serious, I went everywhere, I did not know how he was going." Romero went to visit him once at Cantegril: when Maradona left the state of sedation. "I was totally gone, but I felt that my job was not over if I did not tell him: "Look, crazy, you're almost dying""

Around January 20, Maradona was transferred to Buenos Aires and shortly thereafter continued his re-education treatment in Cuba. "It's only when my life is normal again", Describes Romero, almost repeating today the sigh that reigned at the time.

The elapsed time for this doctor who is defined as "a surly guy". Today, at 46, she is about to get married for the first time. And he has a son, the result of an earlier relationship.

In the 19 years since he saved his life, Jorge Romero has had no chance to see Diego Maradona again. Neither talked with him, nor with anyone from his environment. "I would like to meet him, tell him that it was me who took him to the hospital," he said. And crazy? Have you taken care of yourself all this time?"