Pirri, Via Principe Amedeo. Saturday won't be an ordinary day. For the last time, the door to Pietrina Loche's clinic will open onto a waiting room filled with voices, toys, and parents looking for reassurance. Then, starting Monday, silence.
Having just turned 70, after forty years of distinguished service, one of Cagliari's most beloved pediatricians is retiring. Not by choice, not by exhaustion. But because time, and bureaucracy, have decided so.
"I would have stayed," she says without hesitation. "Because there's no replacement, but above all because my families ask me every day."
Today, approximately 1,200 children are still entrusted to her care. She's Cagliari's maximalist pediatrician, and many parents are putting off choosing a new doctor in the perhaps somewhat naive hope that something will change at the last minute.
Pietrina Loche's professional story begins far from Pirri, but it is here that she puts down roots.
Two years in Uta, in 1986, then the Pirrese area and surrounding areas with the definitive opening of the clinic in 1989 .
"I wanted to be a pediatrician," she says. "Even though my path seemed to be mapped out differently: Professor Corda, my mentor, wanted me at university. I had done so much for that path."
The doors, however, didn't open. "So I chose my own path. I was coming off the best years at the Macciotta clinic, and I felt strong. In theory. In practice, it was much more difficult. Primary care pediatrics is incredibly tough if you don't approach it with determination."
