Maradona with his former physician, Dr. Alfredo Cache
A doctor who treated Diego Maradona for three decades has insisted that his death was a “form of suicide” and that the footballing legend was “tired of living.”
Dr. Alfredo Cahe, who treated Maradona between 1977 and 2007, believes the Argentine sportsman may have stopped eating or taking his medication after entering a state of depression following the brain surgery shortly before his death.
“This just does not seem like a simple heart attack to me,” he told an Argentine radio station on Sunday.
Dr. Cahe also claimed that Maradona had attempted suicide once before, in Cuba, when he drove his car towards an oncoming bus but survived the impact.
He claimed he asked Maradona afterwards whether he wanted to kill himself, and said the footballer replied, “maybe someday, what do I know?”
In the days before Maradona’s death, Dr. Cahe said he spoke with Veronica Ojeda – one of the footballer’s ex-girlfriends and mother of one of his children.
He claims Veronica told him, “You know Diego said he was fed up with living and didn’t want to carry on anymore because he has done everything.”
After learning that Maradona had spent his final days after brain surgery in a single bedroom of his house, Cahe concluded that the sportsman had indeed been depressed.
“Diego was tired,” Dr. Cahe told the radio hosts, before adding that “all of these events were the traits of suicide.”
Dr. Cahe also claimed to have seen Maradona in a hospital in Argentina during his final days, and was critical of the care he was receiving at the time.
He accused the hospital of failing to prepare a proper nursing plan for the hero, of neglecting him while he was in the hospital and of discharging him too early.
“For me there was negligence, recklessness and inexperience, all three,” he said.
“In the clinic I did not see him with a total monitoring and I did not see him being cared with a constant and continuous nursing plan.
“He was not taken care of properly. He should have remained hospitalized, not in a house that was not prepared for him.”
Maradona died aged 60 in his residence located in the city of Tigre in the Argentine province of Buenos Aires on November 25.