A Coruña, Feb 14 (EFE) Mexico with the goal of having the “best quality of life” possible after being close to death.
Dacal was hospitalized for two months in a center in Veracruz (Mexico) after contracting dengue fever from a mosquito bite and his state of health worsened shortly after with appendicitis and spondylodiscitis, an infection in the vertebral body that has affected his leg mobility.
“In Mexico they saved my life and they treated me very well, but here there are more means and possibilities to have an optimal recovery,” he said at the Alvedro Airport, where he was received by family and friends.
There, from the stretcher on which he was transferred by health personnel, he was reunited with his mother, who welcomed him to their land.
“Thanks to everyone for the dissemination, help and support received. I am looking forward to starting this process to recover,” Dacal said.
He recalled that “now there is another journey that is equal to or harder” than the one he lived in Mexico, but that he faces “with great desire, with the will to return” and to recover.
For him, being back in Galicia is, in itself, a success due to the seriousness of his ailment: “I was close to not being here, and I am not referring to the administrative issue,” he said.
Dacal explained that his spinal cord injury is “atypical” because it was not caused by trauma.
“A staphylococcus entered my body and complicated the small and large intestine, with four surgeries in ten days. Now it is about working day by day to see how far we can go, ”she assessed.
His goal, he said, is “to try to return to having the best quality of life possible,” but he did not set a deadline.
“There is no date or forecast of how or when. We fought the first assault, it was hard. There were six or eight weeks of suffering, ”he recounted.
In the medium term, Gustavo Dacal’s “idea” “is to continue in sport in one way or another” and for this he will have the support of his family, whom he had only visited “three or four times” in Galicia in the ten years he was in Mexico.
He had moved to that country after retiring as a professional athlete to start his coaching career.
After contracting dengue, Dacal’s family had to carry out various actions to raise money to pay for his treatment and the Xunta de Galicia paid for his repatriation so that he could continue his recovery in the spinal cord injury unit of the A Coruña Hospital Complex (CHUAC). ).