More worries for Maradona
Afp, Buenos Aires
Diego Maradona faces treatment for alcoholism after being released from hospital, but the Argentine football idol still hopes to attend a major game of his beloved Boca Juniors team. Maradona, 46, will be treated at home for at least two weeks with a medical team, a therapist and nurses on watch for 24 hours to care for the former Argentina captain. Doctors will consider after his two-week house treatment whether to fly him to Switzerland for further care. The former Boca Juniors, Barcelona and Napoli star, who was hospitalized in 2000 and 2004 after heart attacks following cocaine overdoses, said Wednesday he would follow the treatment. "If I mess up, the only one who gets hurt is me," he told local media. "I'm calm." Guemes Sanatorium director Hector Pezzella said Maradona "must follow the prescribed treatment and diet." After Maradona was released from Guemes in Buenos Aires Wednesday, his personal doctor, Alfredo Cahe, said Maradona had made a "surprising" recovery from toxic hepatitis induced by drinking. "His physical and psychological evolution is so good, even I am astonished," Cahe told reporters. The star, who was rushed to the clinic on March 28, lost between six and seven kilos (13 and 15 pounds) during the hospital stay, Cahe said. Maradona may even be healthy enough to go to Boca Juniors' stadium to watch his team take on arch-rivals River Plate in the 10th round of Argentina's Clausura tournament, Cahe said. "On Sunday I will go (to the stadium), with IV, with my doctor, in ambulance, however," Maradona said in a telephone interview with TyC Sports channel, predicting that Boca would win. Maradona, who has a special booth at the "Candy Box," as the fans call the stadium, vowed to go see Boca "until I use the last drop of my blood." "Diego is very intelligent, extremely intuitive," Cahe said. "It is difficult to maintain with him a dialogue with questions and answers, but he knows how to listen." Maradona "is lucid, coherent, calm," said Daniel Tejada, one of the two psychiatrists who looked after him at the hospital. According to a source close to his family, Maradona is staying in a country house in Ezeiza, a town south of the capital where his girlfriend Veronica Ojeda lives.
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