Getting Sick and Getting Well

“Getting Sick and Getting Well” is my crash course on time.  Two weeks ago, a sudden painful condition required that I submit myself for surgery.  Much as I have been avoiding this, an emergency operation was seen as the only solution.  Well, that period of hospital confinement and my current convalescence at home have helped me much to understand time.  These experiences sharpened and enriched my self-knowledge and my view of  various relationships in life.  And when we view something from another perspective, our knowledge of it increases in breadth and depth.

My friend Marie lent me a good read during those time of rest and convalescence in the hospital:
"How to be sick and spiritually profit from it"

It started with the pain that robbed me of sleep.  It came more acute at night yet, I was moving about during the day, managing with the usual tasks.  But three nights without much improvement of what I felt after the usual medications made me a qualified candidate for the hospital’s emergency room (ER).  I had an inkling of what could ail me yet after further study of my condition, more things were diagnosed by the doctors which alarmed me.   And my rowdy imagination made me afraid of what will happened next.  Fortunately, with caring people beside me, I accepted the doctors’ advice and in a few hours, I was wheeled into the operating room (OR).  The next thing I know was I moved in to a room where I will stay put for five more days.

At the Noordhoff Craniofacial Foundation Philippines

I work in a craniofacial center and I am used to coordinate the treatment of patients with their doctors.  Frequently, I work with caregivers and other hospital personnel.  At the center, we endeavor to give the best possible care we can give our patients which includes social services like financial sponsorship and accommodation during long periods of treatment.    Now, my routine was completely changed to becoming a patient.  This drastic shift in my state of affairs gave an extraordinary change in perspective.  It had deepened my understanding of the differing stances of the health care giver and the patient.

Early this year, Pope Benedict XVI had said from his Angelus Message in Rome (5 February 2012):

Flowers from NCFP

It is nonetheless true that illness is a typically human condition in which we feel strongly that we are not self-sufficient but need others. In this regard we might say paradoxically that illness can be a salutary moment in which to experience the attention of others and to pay attention to others!

I learned to value in a special way all who cared for me in the hospital and at home, and the affection from relatives and friends.  It also gave me that solidarity with others who are sick especially those who have no one to care for them.  I keep them very much in my prayers now.   Aside from this new sensitivity, the windfall price of getting sick is the chance of spending more time talking with God.

Smiles of health caregivers greatly cheer the sick.  

What happened to me when I got sick may not be so different with what happens to others in similar situation.   Our moments of sickness may at times be prolonged which is definitely very far from our liking.  How I wish others will not experience what I went through.  But I know that all of us will not be spared in getting ill.  Hippocrates said that “Healing is a matter of time, but it is also a matter of opportunity.” That “evil” moment of ailment can also be the great opportunity of “love” where we can experience what is unique and beautiful.  

Good people are like kaleidoscope mirrors

When I was young, one of my favorite toy is a kaleidoscope that my mother would buy from one of the sidewalk vendors near school.  It was a simple cylinder wrapped with local gift wrapping paper with three slides of mirrors inside and lots of very small colored chips.  Looking through one end of the cylinder, I was fascinated by the beautiful random patterns created by the symmetrical and colorful reflections from the mirrors and from the light coming from the opposite end of the tube.  Those unique and colorful designs were so interesting.  They were just charming.

Good people are like kaleidoscope mirrors that transform the simple bits of colored chips to exquisite and magnificent motifs.  Loved ones and friends enable the humdrum and even life’s terrible situations co-exist with smiles, joy, and courage.  When I was clumsy in holding my kaleidoscope (I broke several when I was in grade school), I discovered that the mechanism inside was very simple.  Yet I cannot bring back the shattered mirrors and the ordinary colored bits in place.  

Nonetheless, in sickness we all need human warmth: to comfort a sick person what counts more than words is serene and sincere closeness.

~Benedict XVII 

The way children are: happy, simple, natural, loving.

Truly, we all need that "serene and sincere closeness" of the others most especially when we get sick.  The human warmth given to the sick is the kaleidoscope's mirror that reflect the magnificent images of colors and shapes.  Definitely, the light of faith in God will make it possible for us to see the beauty and greatness amid the mundane and the humble--even frightening--events that go with the human condition.

On the day I was admitted in the hospital, I was just fortunate to hear the voice of Saint Josemaría Escrivá from a recorded homily which he gave at the University of Navarre on October 8, 1967.  Little did I suspect that this will be the theme of my confinement.  Here is my choice excerpt:

I assure you, my sons and daughters, that when a Christian carries out with love the most insignificant everyday action, that action overflows with the transcendence of God.  That is why I have told you repeatedly, and hammered away once and again on the idea that the Christian vocation consists of making heroic verse out of the prose of each day.  Heaven and earth seem to merge, my sons and daughters, on the horizon.  But where they really meet is in your hearts, when you sanctify your everyday lives.

Thanks to Love, the one who suffer endures and is liberated from the  tyranny of time.   ~o0o~

"Heaven and earth seem to merge, my sons and daughters, on the horizon.  But where they really meet is in your hearts, when you sanctify your everyday lives."
From a homily of St.Josemaria "Passionately Loving the World"
(Photo taken in Nongaya Beach, San Felipe, Zambales)