My name is Dino, I am 44 years old, I discovered I have heart problems at the age of 23, during a visit for fitness to competitive activity at a sports medicine center.

I had a rather pronounced "breath" and the effort test brought out at the time the anomalies of the beat during the effort and in the recovery: I still remember very well the great effort in going down and up that step to the pressing and relentless rhythm of the metronome! A couple of months later, a follow-up echocardiogram done in the hospital found that I was suffering from an interventricular septal hypertrophy. "A serious thing", according to Dr. Iacovoni, the cardiologist of Pope John XXIII who visited me 'and invited' without mincing words to immediately put myself in the hands of the hospital specialists, because alone the drugs in this field do not would have been enough.

It was a real shock. I continued to make my life avoiding as much as possible to think about the disease and remembering that report only to get exemption from the compulsory military service. It took me 7 years to process the diagnosis of Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy, but at 30 I had to give in to the need to address the issue.

Not following the prohibitions of the doctor and the cardiologist (!), I played football for pleasure and I realized that my resistance to effort was always lower, clearly different from that of my teammates. The cardiologist certified Hypertrophic Obstructive Cardiomyopathy and prescribed me a beta blocker: Sequacor.

At 35, 12 years after Dr. Iacovoni's prophecy, the disease progressed and the therapy did not produce appreciable effects. The cardiologist therefore advised me to contact a specialist and it was then that I crossed the threshold of the Florentine studio of the greatest expert in Italy: Professor Cecchi. Thanks to him, in the space of a few months I passed from a condition of uncertainty and refusal to the important choice of fighting the disease through surgery. A determining factor in that decision was also the fright for the first episode of Atrial Fibrillation that occurred during a holiday in Sicily: I instinctively ran to the car in which I had forgotten my cell phone and for 2 hours I found myself with a crazy heart in my chest. .

A few months later, at the age of 36, I was operated on on Pope John XXIII by the excellent team, then directed by Prof. Ferrazzi. An intervention that was perfectly successful and that I endured very well. Since then I have been following a program of

annual checks at the S.Luca Hospital (Auxological Institute of Milan), followed by highly trained and continuously updated young cardiologists, thanks to the collaboration with Professor Cecchi. How am I doing today? Overall good. I have a family with two children that I periodically check, I try to lead a normal life, being especially careful not to make sudden or prolonged efforts. I am in therapy with Nadolol and Coumadin, due to arrhythmias: in fact, that first episode of atrial fibrillation in Sicily was followed by others about every 6 months. But my heart every time, for now, "rearranges" itself, so ... go on like this and we hope for the progress of the research!