They told him that he was never going to walk and today plays football: Tiziano’s «miracle» thanks to a solidarity hand

«Titian! Come here! ”, A mother shouts at her seven -year -old son, who seems not to listen to her. Every afternoon, when he returns from school, it is the same story. With a football ball under his left foot, the child runs at full speed the two blocks that separate his house from the neighborhood of the neighborhood, In Rincón de Milberg, in Tigre.

His mother, Florencia Fiori (27), calls him again, but Tiziano ignores him. It even seems to accelerate. However, he is far from getting angry with his son. On the contrary, his face is illuminated and You can’t help smiling while you see the boy running. When he arrives at the Defensores de Rincón club, he sits on the bank next to the football court and contemplate how your child kicked the ball again and again between the two arc posts, almost as if I couldn’t believe what you are seeing.

Six years agomother and son were in the same place. But instead of being playing, the Tizian of almost two years rested in the arms of Florence, to which doctors They had assured him that his son «was never going to be able to walk». It had been diagnosed with Prune Belly syndrome, a congenital disease that is characterized by the absence of the abdominal wall and urinary tract anomalies. In addition, a bad praxis during a surgery at three months of life had left Half of your paralyzed body.

But Florence refused to give up, dreamed for his son a life in which he could walk, jump and play with his cousins. I knew that one «Fernando» sometimes went to the club to play with the boys and that he was related to nuns who helped in the neighborhood. He then approached because he thought he could help her in some way.

He would never have imagined that this tall man, almost 50 and that he wore sunglasses while kicing the ball as if he were another boy, was actually the founder of an organization that provides equipment to pediatric patients with neuromotor pathologies, such as Tiziano’s.

Fernando Méndez (55) created the one X Foundation 10 years ago. He had come to have three bars at the same time, but when he sold the most important, he was in Palermo, he found too much free time. He felt then that the time had come to leave his business behind and focus on helping others.

He had a couple of friends with young children with different neuromotor pathologies and knew that there was a problem of access to the treatments they needed. Thus, he began to recruit doctors and kinesiologists known to join as volunteers. In addition, he sold the other two businesses and began to shape the project, which he devoted fully.

Today the organization adds 24 venues and 400 volunteers, who already delivered more than 2000 devices to boys with different pathologies. It is mostly walkers, postural and standing chairs. In general, the families they help live in very vulnerable homes, sometimes they do not know how to read or write, and have to travel several hours in collective to receive the medical care that their children need.

Although in the case of Tiziano the walker allowed him to be able to walk again, not all teams have that end. Some only seek to correct the position to improve swallowing and digestion. However, in all cases, even when it comes to degenerative or without cure syndromes, The teams guarantee children a better quality of life.

When Florence, hopeful, approached Fernando, back in 2019, he immediately got him a voluntary kinesiologist, with which he still serves, monitor him and, in parallel, he gave him the different walkers who, as he grew up, was needed.

So, At two and a half years, Tiziano was able to walk for the first time without the help of a walker. His mother cannot help crying, as he did that time, when he remembers the moment. Some time later, the child was able to leave the walker definitely. “The day we returned the walker I also cried. Tiziano told him ´’chau chau ‘and moved his little hand. It was a very special moment, ”says Florence.

The one X Foundation already helped more than 2000 boys like Tiziano. Their work consists in collecting teams that families, doctors and institutions donate to the organization, refer them, adapt them to the needs of each boy and deliver them. However, Fernando points out that he has two differentials.

The first, which have digitized from the first day the organization, monitoring and management of donations. The second, which make each boy a medical follow -up, to make sure the team that fits their needs perfectly and to be able to change it in case it requires it.

“The problem is that the country’s health system is not prepared to cover so much need, to respond in the times that this type of pathologies require. And it is a shame because, at some point, the devices that the boys need, are. But what is missing is organization. Therefore, from the place we have, what we have tried was to modernize it a bit, ”says Fernando.

Every day, it is forced to reject donations from various teams because it does not have enough resources to withdraw them, refacing, store and distribute them. The organization is completely supported by the contributions made by its donors by one Web page. Today, they are a little less than 100 and allow the Foundation deliver a team every 72 hours.

“Beyond the action of delivering a team to a boy and knowing that he will change his life and that of his family, which is something supergratifying and that fills my soul, my soul, What makes me most happy is to have created a system, a protocol, which works and that makes help and donations organized and effective”Fernando says. His dream is Expand and improve the coverage of one X one to adolescent patients and adults and that becomes a massive scope program that reaches each person who needs it.

When Fernando decided to leave his business behind, many of his friends told him that «he was crazy» and that «he was not going to win money with that.» But he would not change his decision for anything in the world. “What gratifies me is to know that I left a legacy in the other. Nor to have made 100 trips or have uploaded dozens of mountains compared to the feeling of knowing that I could change life to others. It is something that will take me to the grave, ”he explains.

More than five years later, Fernando still greets Tiziano for each of his birthdays and visits him to play ball with him, while Florence contemplates his son’s «new life»: «He was always a baby full of love and full of happiness. I remember that when I was little, he literally crawled to play. And now run everywhere. It is a machine. ”