Read Online 100 Days of Happiness by Fausto Brizzi - Free Book Online

There are cases of anemia, digestive problems, loss of appetite and alteration of taste perceptions, fever, coughing, sore throat, headaches, muscle pains, jangled nerves, hearing loss, loss of sexual appetite, and problems with fertility.”
    Is that all?
    If I do nothing, I’ll die in a few months, with the assistance of kindly medicines to keep me from suffering in my last few days. If I subject myself to the best known type of cancer treatment, I’ll die all the same, though probably later; however, in the meanwhile I’ll be transformed: I’ll no longer be Lucio Battistini but a 220-pound ghost,stunned and languishing on a sofa, confined to endless hours of channel surfing.
    The oncologist asks me if I want to start the first round of chemotherapy. I say nothing. Very simply, I don’t know.
    At the door, I hug Paola good-bye and head off toward the pastry shop to get my few possessions. I’ll catch up with her later at home to eat dinner with the kids.
    Lorenzo and Eva.
    The mere sound of their names is enough to make me want to cry.
    I try not to think about it. Not now.
    Â * * * 
    My father-in-law says nothing as he sits listening to my report on the appointment. I summarize: I have a hundred days left to live. A few days more, a few days less. Then what the oncologist calls the final phase will set in, and I don’t even want to imagine what that will be like.
    The question that Oscar asks me is horrifying but legitimate: “So how do you want to spend these hundred days?”
    Another question I have no answer to.
    A hundred days.
    That’s a very long time for a vacation.
    There are only a very lucky few who’ve taken a vacation that lasted a hundred days.
    Too bad we’re not talking about a vacation.
    Â * * * 
    A hundred days.
    I’ve never thought about it.
    No one’s ever thought about it.
    What would you do if you had only a hundred days left to live?
    Long pause.
    Let me repeat the question.
    What would you do if you had only a hundred days left to live?
    Let me offer some suggestions.
    Would you get up and go to work or to school tomorrow morning?
    Would you spend every minute of your day having sex with the one you love?
    Would you sell everything you own and move to a tropical island?
    Would you pray to the God you worship?
    Would you pray to a God you’ve never believed in?
    Would you scream as long as there was a breath left in your body?
    Would you lie there staring endlessly at the ceiling, hoping for it to collapse and crush you?
    I’m going to leave a couple of pages blank, for you to jot down your notes. Scribble in it, be my guest, I won’t be offended.

−100
    M y biological clock wakes me up at four in the morning.
    Paola’s asleep. She’s let me back into the big bed, but no physical contact.
    A hundred days.
    It’s the first thing to come into my head.
    A hundred days.
    A couple days more, a couple days less. A statistical detail.
    That’s quite a few days. It’s 2,400 hours, and I’m going to waste about 800 of those hours sleeping.
    It’s 8,640,000 seconds. Eight million. If you put it in seconds, it seems like a long, long time.
    But a hundred days sounds a lot more cheerful. Sounds sort of easygoing and adolescent.
    â€œA hundred days until your final exams at high school.”
    What a great time that was. I went around town dressed up for Carnevale (it goes without saying that I was always dressed as one of the three musketeers) carrying a shoe box with a slot cut into it, begging for spare change. Then the whole class would enjoy a pizza buffet, paid for by generous passersby moved to pity by their memories of the old days when the tables were turned.
    Back then, it was a hundred days until the beginning of my future.
    A hundred days.
    I go to my desk, I dig all the way to the back of a drawer, and I findan old lined school notebook. On the cover is Dino Zoff, captain of