On 11 October last year, Rafael David celebrated his 18th birthday, so he threw a big party with his friends. He had fun, danced, drank and laughed as he always did. That day, Rafael David's girlfriend spent a long time sitting on his lap, joking and telling stories. The next day, when he commented that his leg hurt a lot, we suggested that it was all because the girlfriend had been on top of him all night. That day was the first day that the painkillers had no effect and the pain continued.

That October, we began our way of the cross through all the traumatologists in the city. Examinations, studies, tests, gave various results. Each traumatologist gave a different diagnosis: one said it could be osteomyelitis, another said it was hypercalcaemia or osteomalacia and they even concluded that it was a spinal problem. They all prescribed antibiotics, painkillers and drainage because the leg was already starting to swell. Because of the latter, a doctor recommended physiotherapy. December came and Rafael David did physiotherapy for the whole month, every day, without seeing any improvement. On the contrary, the upper part of the leg started to swell and Rafael David complained a lot about the pain.

In January of this year we finally knew, after a thousand tests, the size of the monster we had to face. The diagnosis came and left us soulless in the face of life: it was a malignant tumour that was advancing by the hour. We had to run to win the battle against that monster and save Rafael David.

As if the clock was ticking in our chest, ticking; as if the heart was pounding in our ears, ticking; as if we had legs of steel, we started to run, feeling that the thousand-headed monster was stepping on our toes. Buying medicines, running tests, planning chemotherapies, looking for special foods and raising money, all at incredible speed, because we knew that some illnesses require stamina, but this one required speed. Twenty-four hours a day was not enough for all the care we had to take: any gap, any space, would be taken by the disease.

Every night, while I tried to sleep, while I prayed and asked God for strength, I beat my chest, feeling very guilty for not having acted sooner, if we had gone to the doctor in March last year, if we had given importance to her pain, if we had not looked at her complaint with disinterest, if we had acted more intelligently, if we had looked for a good specialist from the beginning, if there were not so many negligent doctors in this country? But time moves on and although we would like to go back and make amends for our mistakes, to make things better, there is no handle we can use to turn back the days.

On Sunday last week, the 21st of April, after three months, my beloved nephew closed his eyes forever. I still can't stop crying, I still feel his laughter close to me and his hands close to mine. I still can't resign myself to not seeing him anymore, to having to accept that Rafael David, my 18 year old boy, the youngest of my nephews, will never be the man he always wanted to be. I still ask God for the chance to wake up from this nightmare and for it to be March 2023, with Rafael David alive, and to do things differently.