In memoriam: an English translation of an article about our departed firend, Jordi Mancebo i Cortes

 

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What makes a hospital like Sant Pau, where past and future meet, so great? Its more than six centuries of history? Its modern buildings and equipment? Its University calling? No, this hospital, like all hospitals, is truly great because of its professionals, who understand health care as a public service and dedicate their lives to what they know best: taking care of us. Jordi Mancebo is, sorry, was one of them. 

 

Dr. Mancebo arrived at Sant Pau in 1981 to specialize in intensive care medicine and there he stayed. His work as Chief of Service of Intensive Care Medicine won him numerous honors nationally and internationally. Two of the last honors came this past May when the Spanish Society of Medicine and the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine named him Honorary Member.

 

Dr. Mancebo was a tireless worker. Without a doubt the greatest homage was that of his patients, such as the one that Joaquim de Miquel Sagnier offered yesterday, “in the worst moments of Covid in March 2020, Dr. Mancebo fought for me and for everybody with perseverance, bravery, optimism, empathy, and without rest and without losing enthusiasm. My hero.” In those days he had a cot installed beside the ICU so he could sleep closer to the sick patients.

 

The man who could be found on that cot was a scientist and professor of great renown who received the prize for professional excellence from his colleagues in Barcelona in 2013. Nothing and no one would make him bite his tongue. He pitilessly criticized healthcare budget cuts and the patchwork resources with which they had to fight Covid in those early days. The number of ICU beds doubled, yes, but not the number of intensivists. “What good are more planes without more pilots?“ he wondered aloud. 

 

In June 2021 he underwent surgery for a herniated disc. He took leave for two months and it was difficult for him to get back to one of his great passions, bicycling. He said that his left leg had become weaker than the right. Some months later a tumor was found. Nobody knew better than he did exactly what he was up against. The tumor was very advanced, with metastases in multiple organs. This Saturday, serenely and tranquilly, he died. This year he would have turned 65-years-old.

 

Father of two children who are economists, there were no other medical doctors in his family. He fell in love with medicine as a child, at the pediatrician’s office. He was fascinated that they were people capable of alleviating others’ pain and he said that was what he wanted to do when he grew up. He kept his word, and more. In a hospital there are few pleasant places but without a doubt the trenches are in the ICU. His ICU, where he spent more time than at home. 

 

A wake will be held in the Cemetery of Les Corts where this Sunday [August 7, 2022] the funeral will take place. On Monday [August 8, 2022] in the Parish of Santa María de Blanes, a mass will be held in his memory. 

 

He was a music lover and great reader, and one of the last books he received as a gift was The Forgotten that We WIll Be by Hector Abad Faciolince. Will we one day forget his name? Whether we do depends on us. 

 

History books in the future should explain that the Covid pandemic caused much pain but it didn’t do as much damage as it might have thanks to the women and men who defended the public’s health until their last breath, just as this doctor, who answered the call, did throughout his life with dignity, integrity, and passion.

 

“And while a voice within me cries,

I’m sure someone will answer my call,

And this bitter earth,

May not be, oh, be so bitter after all.”

- Dinah Washington, This Bitter Earth