Originally from Portugal, cheeky Fernando Oliveira worked as a luggage porter at The Lanesborough for some 22 years. His friend, Zoltan, met him when they worked together at the Royal Garden. They both aspired to work at The Lanesborough and had their eyes set on that.
Fernando’s warm, generous, positive, and bubbly nature meant he was loved by staff and guests alike. He was great to work with and he had a good sense of humour; he would even pretend to speak in French to make his colleagues laugh. He had nicknames like Pips, Best Portuguese. He liked to cook for the team at his home, but he would often have a protein shake himself because of the issues he had with swallowing.
Fernando loved football, and he supported Arsenal. He enjoyed a visit to a box in the new stadium when it opened with Zoltan (who didn’t support Arsenal), it was a gift given by a guest.
The team at The Lanesborough remember him always having a persistent cough and taking off the shelf medication, like Gaviscon and Rennie, to relieve his heartburn symptoms for a long time. They would frequently urge him to go and get it checked out. The team say you could hear him coming with his cough. They think the reason he never went to get it checked out, was because he may have been scared to find out what was wrong. Then in 2018, Fernando finally went to the doctors after coming home early from a holiday as he could no longer swallow. Following an endoscopy and a further biopsy, he was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer.
Fernando proceeded with a chemotherapy stent treatment programme, this in turn made him too poorly to work, his team and those around him were devastated so they decided to support him financially as a team to try and help. They didn’t want him to worry mentally as well about making ends meet.
After spending the majority of 2019 receiving treatment, it was stopped due to the effect it was having on Fernando’s health. He sadly died in February 2020, leaving behind his much loved wife and their three grown-up children.
Below is a lovely video from some of Fernando’s friends at The Lanesborough Hotel.
Association with HCUK:
The Lanesborough Hotel have been a wonderful supporter of HCUK since early 2021. The partnership started following the loss of Fernando (51) and only months later another member of The Lanesborough team lost their husband, Dean (49), to oesophageal cancer. After losing both Fernando and Dean in the same year they decided to make us their chosen charity and we are really pleased they did. Their support has helped us to raise awareness and move forward with our mission to improve earlier diagnosis with our mobile units using the Capsule Sponge test.
