Mauricio Pinilla tells his drama: "I have skin cancer"

Mauricio Pinilla is facing a new delicate phase on a personal level. The former Chilean national team striker revealed that he has been diagnosed with skin cancer. “I will tell you about an important moment in my life that I am living. I was diagnosed with prostatitis, I ended up in the clinic, they did a lot of tests for some spots that had appeared on my skin and they detected skin cancer. I had never told them”, he said on Metro TV’s Marca Personal program.

Aldo Seghedoni

“It’s only the first stage, so they have to burn off these speckles and it should resolve in a short time. I am following a treatment, the most appropriate therapy for this to resolve”, continued to tell the former player of numerous Italian teams: we saw him wear the jerseys of Chievo, in the 2003-04 season, and then in rapid succession, from 2009 to 2017, of Grosseto, Palermo, Cagliari, Genoa, Atalanta and Genoa again, before returning to his homeland and ending his very brilliant career with Universidad de Chile and Coquimbo Unido.

“In the first few days I experienced it very badly – continued the man, who last week blew out forty-one candles – I was four days hospitalized in the clinic, my immunity dropped drastically, I caught the flu four times in four weeks, one got worse and it was like having a double flu, I had a fever of 41, I went into the clinic delirious, I don’t even remember what happened in those moments”.

“Today I feel good, although sometimes I get a bout of anxiety that I have to treat with medication, and the anti-anxiety drugs have helped me a lot to get through those complicated moments. I’m continuing with the psychologist, with the psychiatrist, I’m treating myself, I’m also careful about my mental health, I don’t give up. Today it seems that people are afraid to say the things they are experiencing and going through. The most important thing instead is to say it, express it and take action. Having the opportunity to go to a psychologist, to a psychiatrist, to make the important decision to get treatment”, Pinilla concluded.