Читать книгу Carlos Slim - Diego Osorno - Страница 22

10

Heart

Ten years before becoming the wealthiest man on earth, Carlos Slim was at death’s door with a heart condition. In the fall of 1997, the tycoon looked so thin and weak that his close friends worried they might never see him again in his office doing calculations on three calculators at a time. And those close to him couldn’t get used to the idea of not seeing him review financial reports from all over the world with the impassive gaze of a shark hunting its prey. He traveled in secret to Houston, Texas, accompanied by his wife, to have one of the valves in his heart replaced. It was considered a low-risk operation.

He went to the Texas Heart Institute, an Adventist medical center directed by Denton Cooley, who was famous for having carried out the first artificial heart transplant. The surgical team leader was Michael Duncan, and the doctor in charge of operating, Paolo Angelini, was an Italian cardiologist who had studied in Mexico, spoke passable Spanish and to whom Slim took a liking. When they were finishing the open-heart surgery, the seam on the new valve broke. Slim suffered a hemorrhage that the specialists battled to stop, transfusing thirty-one bags of blood. During the twenty-four hours that followed, Slim breathed with the help of a ventilator. His immune system was vulnerable and he caught pneumonia. Within a couple of weeks, the businessman lost over forty pounds.