By Marinos Pavlikkas (Famagusta.News)
There are often examples of people to whom life is not given. People who succumb to the relentless blows of fate. One of these people is Mr. Adamos Kkafas from Sotira, who received countless beatings in his life. Fight cancer, diabetes, pancreatitis, stroke and heart attack. Nevertheless, he takes strength from his family and is an example of endurance and mental strength.
At the age of 53, Mr. Adamos Kkafas is confined to a wheelchair, facing great difficulties in movement and speech. His wife Kyriakoulas and his three children, Maria, Nikolas and Louisa, support him. However, the blows that forced him to get stuck in the wheelchair were not one but many.
The first strokes
At the young age of 36 his heart stopped working. Acute myocardial infarction occurred due to obstruction of five arteries. His doctors recommend that he stay in the hospital until he travels to the UK. A few months later he goes abroad where he will undergo open heart surgery.
When the operation is completed, he believes that his life has smiled. He hopes that, despite the type 2 diabetes that afflicts him, he has managed to fool his fate.
The battle with cancer
Nevertheless, life will reveal its hard face to him, when exactly two years after the open heart surgery, in 2002, he will be diagnosed with acute leukemia.
As he describes himself, he could not believe these beatings. He did not believe the doctors who, while admitted to the hospital for heart tests, were diagnosed with acute leukemia.
The battle with cancer was painful and exhausting. He was hospitalized for a very long time at Makareio Hospital to complete the chemotherapy, a procedure that, as he describes, was still an uninterrupted battle to the death.
As if that were not enough, during his hospitalization at Makareio Hospital he will be diagnosed with acute pancreatitis.
The stroke
The biggest blow to Mr. Kkafa's life, however, was when in 2006 life tried him again. His wife finds him in the room, as he describes, suffering from headaches. They go to the First Aid and are admitted for examinations on the axial. The stroke changed his life forever. Difficulties in movement and speech are caused, while he is unable to walk.
He is forced to get stuck in a wheelchair. As his wife, Mrs. Kyriakoula Kkafa, describes, it took years for him to accept the wheelchair. Nevertheless, it was his only option to escape from confinement at home.
Hope kept him alive
The way Adamos Kkafas looks at life today was the source of his power to stay alive. He describes the hardships of life with pain, constantly stating that both his wife and his children never left him. According to him, his children grew up watching their father spend most of the year in a hospital room.
Nevertheless, he did not give up. Every day he is in the small supermarket that they maintain in Sotira, trying with all the strength that comes from his soul to help his wife at work and in the care of their first grandchild. The decision to leave home and socialize with people was difficult, but this was one of the main reasons that gave him the stamina to continue his daily struggle. The most important thing he told us is that he never stopped having faith in God and love in his family, while as he believes, every blow of fate is a test to appreciate the real value of life and the people who are around us.
* Source: SIMERINI newspaper of Sunday (3/9/2017)