Brasilia, Sep 8 (EFE) Brazilian Vice President Jose Alencar, who for 12 years has suffered from an aggressive intestinal cancer, said in an interview published over the weekend that “he feels debilitated” and “is preparing for death as never before”.
The 77-year-old Alencar used a football metaphor to tell Veja magazine about his current state of health, saying that he feels “too debilitated to experience the best moment of a match and feel that surge of emotion at scoring a goal” because he no longer has the “strength to climb the fence and celebrate”.
The vice president said that after undergoing 15 operations since 1997, “death today would be a reward” but noted that this “doesn’t mean I’ve stopped fighting for my life”.
Alencar, however, said he was aware that his “medical outlook is very difficult, if not impossible”, and that the illness he is suffering is totally incurable.
In addition to serving as vice president since January 2003, Alencar is a wealthy businessman and owner of the large textile group Coteminas, which has 16,000 employees and factories in Brazil, Argentina, the US and Mexico.
