So far, you are probably saying to yourself, "Okay, I get it - he's a famous pediatric cardiologist. So what?" Chances are that you may have heard about Dr. Canessa for a different reason. He was a candidate in the 1994 Uruguayan presidential elections, but he only garnered 0.08% of the vote. So unless you are from Uruguay, or at the very least familiar with South American politics, that's probably not the reason you should know who he is either.
You may have heard about Dr. Canessa as one of sixteen survivors of the Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, which crashed in the Andes mountains on October 13, 1972. The crash was the subject of a book and a 1993 movie, called Alive, which starred Ethan Hawke as Roberto's friend, Nando Parrado. Both Roberto (a second-year medical student at the time) and Nando were members of a local rugby team in Montevideo, Uruguay and were heading for a tournament in Santiago, Chile when their plane crashed. Flight 571 crash landed on a glacier at an elevation of 11,710 feet in a remote area of the Andes Mountains. Of the 45 people on board, 28 survived the initial crash. The book Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors (which I have also read), written in 1974 by Piers Paul Read tells the harrowing story of the subsequent 72 days spent on the glacier before they were rescued. Only 16 of the 28 initial survivors would survive to be rescued.
The survivors of the crash found out fairly quickly (all of the communications equipment on the plane was destroyed during the crash, but the survivors were able to listen to news coverage of the crash on a transistor radio) that rescue attempts were stopped on the tenth day after the crash. Faced with starvation (the supply of food on the plane was very limited, and there was nothing edible to be found at that altitude either), the survivors made a pact that if any of them should die, the others would consume their bodies in order to live.
On the seventeenth day after the crash, an avalanche filled the rear of the plane's broken fuselage with snow, killing eight more survivors (1 additional survivor had died from injuries suffered during the crash). The remaining survivors lived for the next month and a half by honoring the pact that they had made with each other - consuming the bodies of the passengers who had died in order to live.
Sixty days after the crash, Nando and Roberto, neither of whom had any mountaineering experience or gear of any kind, climbed from the glacier to the mountain peak (15,320 feet) and found that their way was blocked. They climbed back in another direction and walked through the mountains for about 10 days, covering 38 miles, before they ran into a Chilean arriero named Sergio Catalan, who gave them food and rode for 10 hours to find help. The remaining survivors were rescued on December 23, 1972, more than 2 months after they had crashed.
I remember that my son read the book, Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors in his high school religion class. I read the book after watching the movie, so I knew of the story when Dr. Canessa came to speak at my academic pediatric conference. I actually did not know that he had become a well known pediatric cardiologist, and when I learned that he had written a book about his experiences and subsequent life, I immediately ordered it at the library.
In his book, I Had to Survive: How a Plane Crash in the Andes Inspired My Calling to Save Lives, Dr. Robert Canessa tells the story of the details before, during, and after the plane crash that he and his teammates experienced in 1972. His book goes into a little more detail about some of the experiences of some of the family members (primarily Nando Parrado's parents and Dr. Canessa's parents and girlfriend) in the two months after the crash. Compared to the book, Alive, which was written by someone who did not live through the experience itself, Dr. Canessa's book provides a more personal description of the events that occurred in the aftermath of the crash. He uses the story as a backdrop for why he chose to go on to practice medicine and why he became a pediatric cardiologist. Throughout the book, Dr. Canessa infuses personal stories of patients that he has cared for over the course of a very long and illustrious career.
During an interview with National Geographic magazine, Dr. Canessa was asked to talk about how his experience with the crash related to his work as a pediatric cardiology. He had this to say:
When I see a baby in a mother’s womb, with half of its heart missing, looking through the window of the ultrasound machine is like seeing the moon through the window of the plane that night. But now I can be the shepherd who can make this child survive. It’s my revenge on death. I tell the mother, “You have a big mountain to climb. I was there before. I know how you feel. But the joy and happiness that awaits you on the other side is spectacular!” This book is a manual of adversity dedicated to people that suffer—and don’t think that there’s light at the end of the tunnel.
What were the lessons that he learned on the mountain, and what lessons does his experience have for us today?
That if you have sleep, water to drink, and decent food, you are lucky. Don’t wait for your plane to crash to realize how lucky you are. Be more grateful for life. You can wait for the helicopter, but don’t wait too long.
In life there is a moment to wait and see what happens, but there is also a moment to get active. Walk out and search for your own helicopter, otherwise you will succumb. Don’t be seduced by your own ego and think you’re better than other people, because that’s the beginning of being unsuccessful. Every day, try to do something positive, so that when you put your head on the pillow you can ask yourself if you are a good person or not. The next day, try to do better. Every day, when I look at myself in the mirror, I thank God the same old jerk is still staring back at me.
I can't think of a better lesson than that. Thank you, Dr. Roberto Canessa.
I can't think of a better lesson than that. Thank you, Dr. Roberto Canessa.
No comments:
Post a Comment