«I stagger but I don’t give up»: the story of Antonella and her “Di testa mia”
There are letters that land in your inbox and force you to stop. The one from Antonella Fabbri arrived at the beginning of July, with a terse subject line — «Information» — and content that was anything but terse. «I am one of the many people with grade IV glioblastoma multiforme», she wrote. Then, a few lines below, almost in passing, the sentence that stayed with me for days: «So many people tell me I’m a phenomenon». It isn’t vanity. It is Antonella’s way of describing something that the numbers of medicine struggle to explain: she is still here.
Her story begins on 6 April 2021. Diagnosis: grade IV glioblastoma multiforme, methylated, with PTEN loss. Then the path that many of us know by heart: surgery, the Stupp protocol, radiotherapy with chemotherapy. But Antonella’s body sets its own terms. A significant thrombocytopenia slows everything down, forcing her to suspend, to recalibrate. Maintenance chemotherapy with temozolomide begins only in August 2021, at less than half the dose — and precisely for this reason she carries it on for as long as possible, until October 2023. Two whole years. Anyone who knows this disease knows what it means to get there. From the first days of September 2021, Optune comes into the picture, the alternating electric field therapy. Antonella doesn’t call it a «device». She calls it «my faithful travel companion». She wore it every day, for years, until the 2nd of January this year.
Then, on 2 January 2026, the MRI shows what no one wants to see: a mass of almost seven centimetres, left temporo-occipital, inoperable. Prognosis: two months. Optune, «much to my regret», is suspended — and with it, she says, the chance to find out whether that travel companion might have helped her against the recurrence too. Antonella does not stop. She undergoes eighteen sessions of palliative radiotherapy, at half the dose. She passes through hospice. She begins Avastin at the Veneto Institute of Oncology in Padua, and — in her words — «it seems I’m responding». Two months of prognosis had been written in January. I am writing these lines at the end of July, and Antonella is still here.
In a conversation a few days ago she told me about the last few weeks with her usual blend of lucidity and irony: a fall in the street, a battered knee, tingling and numbness that come and go. And then, the surprise: the neurosurgeon told her she is not terminal. «On one hand that’s good», she wrote to me, «but the whole context is collapsing on top of me. I stagger but I don’t give up». I thought about it for a long time. This is exactly Antonella’s tone: no denial of the effort — the tiredness is there, the slowing down is there — but not a single moment of surrender. She has gone through the upheaval of her life, she says, «without any particular impairment», carrying it on as she always has. And in the meantime she writes. Because Antonella, on top of everything else, is an author.
Last year the Fondazione Giovanni Celeghin of Pernumia (PD) published her book, Di testa mia. It is a diary. It retraces day by day — sometimes a precise date, sometimes the memory of an entire month — the fears, the anxieties, the moments of happiness of the journey with glioblastoma. «For me, keeping this diary was a lifesaver», she confided. It is not a book written to impress: it is narrative medicine in the most authentic sense, the testimony of someone who turns her own experience into something that can help others — patients, caregivers, and even those who have no health problem at all.
I received my copy with a dedication that Antonella wrote to me on 6 July. I read it in one sitting, starting right from that dedication. And here comes the part that makes this story different from the others: the entire proceeds of the book go to the Fondazione Celeghin, whose mission is precisely to fund research on glioblastoma. Buying Di testa mia means reading a story that moves you and, at the same time, supporting the research that can give people like Antonella months, and those who come after, perhaps, much more. She is utterly convinced of it: «I firmly believe that only research can help find solutions beyond the current standard and the classic median survival index». And as if one book were not enough, she is already writing a second one. «With no pretension», she points out, «neither of publication nor of pointless editorial success». Only the need to keep telling the story.
Antonella’s story intertwines with a pressing current issue. Optune itself — the therapy that was her «faithful travel companion» — is at the centre these days of a national assessment: Agenas has opened a public consultation on the Health Technology Assessment report of the device. We wrote about it in a dedicated article. These are decisions made on statistical averages and cost-effectiveness ratios; but behind every average there is a person like Antonella, for whom those months gained — and the quality of those months — are worth more than any survival curve. Her experience is the reason why the voice of those who live the disease every day must reach all the way to those tables.
If I had to choose two words for Antonella, they would be exactly these: hope and courage. It is no coincidence that this is the name of the project we run on this site — Speranza e Coraggio (Hope and Courage) — a specialised and completely free psychological support service, designed to accompany patients and families through the hardest moments. Antonella is, literally, that project made person: the proof that you can stagger without giving up, that you can be given a two-month prognosis and use it to write a book, begin another, and keep reaching out to others.
To her go all my gratitude, and our admiration. Thank you, Antonella, for your strength and for the dedication of 6 July. Keep staggering, if you must. But don’t give up.
The book Di testa mia by Antonella Fabbri is published with the support of the Fondazione Giovanni Celeghin of Pernumia (PD). The entire proceeds support research on glioblastoma.
