2024-09-01 23:30:03
At the age of 64, Eugenio Santana Franco of Brazil debuts at the Paris 2024 Paralympics. He’s one of the oldest among the para-archers, and – as all of them – brought an inspirational story.
Eugenio used to work as a nurse.
“I treated lots of children,” he said.
“A lot of them were going to have amputated limbs. I would tell them about things they would still be able to do. They would reply: ‘Sir, I’m sorry, I won’t be able to, I’ll have no legs’. Then I started taking videos of para archery to show them ‘look what they can do’. I showed videos of Matt Stutzman to those children.”
It was Eugenio’s way to inspire people who started new chapters of their lives. And whose world seemed to collapse.
“Years later, I showed them videos of myself,” he claimed.
Santana Franco sat in a wheelchair and calmly related his story, going through the diseases he had and how progressively he was losing his health.
“I suffer from Ankylosing spondylitis, diabetes, hypertension, and Parkinson’s. Two years ago, heart aneurysm was diagnosed, too, and it can’t be treated with surgery,” Eugenio said.
Ankylosing spondylitis forced him to use a wheelchair.
“It’s a disease that makes all the joints stiff,” the former nurse explained the disease’s characteristics.
“It started in 2011, and it took around four or five years before it got diagnosed. In the beginning, I used a cane, eventually crutches, and then a wheelchair.”
Eugenio, who used to ignite his patient’s motivation, just mustn’t have collapsed mentally.
“I worked all my life with patients, and I’ve witnessed various types of conditions and difficulties. I took it naturally. I was somehow used to that,” he claimed.
“It’s the best you can do. That can happen to anyone. You need to approach it with a smile and take the best out of it.”
