A STORY, TO REFLECT

THE VISITOR

Today is a very hot day.
I feel the smell of the salt air as the waves of the warm crystal clear waters lull me, and in the distance I hear the soothing rustle of palm trees in motion; at some point, however, I am pulled to the bottom, I can not stay afloat and begin to sink inexorably. A feeling of dread comes over me while the salt water begins to enter my nostrils and I can not go back to the surface. Coming more and more, I start to feel air hunger as her lungs flooded me and my head starts to spin wildly; then the view becomes blurred to me, I lose consciousness and ...
I wake up, sweating, throbbing in my bed in the cancer ward. All reality comes to my mind.
I have cancer.
It is not easy to describe what you feel when t'informano that stay six months at the latest one year of life, due to an advanced cancer of the pancreatic head and on top of fifty years. Thousands of sensations and feelings t'invadono suddenly, disbelief, anger, fear, then all is silent, in and around you and you are filled with a deep and aggressive silence, as the distance.
Yes, because at the beginning, in addition to the anger of the expected defeat, I felt alone, just like a leper. Friends and relatives have turned away their eyes, for fear of meeting my and dialogues have been reduced to almost zero, because obviously there were no words to communicate the incommunicable.
And God, which was over ??? Hung on a wall or inside a sacred book?
Then my wife saw again, the tired look, his little smile on his lips; caressed me, sweet, and then find myself and find myself still so my God, although I still believe that suffering, the real one, is not meant to be borne by us poor mortals, at least if we are alone.
But I must add that this my state, the terminally ill, has allowed me to discover situations and feelings that I had previously only heard the aroma, but that I had never tasted a pieno.Non have ever tried to linger on the scent of freshly baked, typical of the early hours of the day and that fills the air of the streets of your neighborhood? I bet you have never noticed that mixture of crunchy and toasted that blends the sweet fragrance of stuffed croissants. My attention to the little things has become such that they are now able to distinguish the type of bread that my baker has just baked, whether or Frenchman michetta, biove or Apulian ... And then there's the song of the birds of park where I go to rest and to think ... If you linger, would be aware of the variability of tones and sound frequencies that radiate around us, creating simple melodies that touch the heart ... in fact even that I'm starting to realize that that is not enough to hear with your ears, but also need to listen carefully and absorb the acoustic vibrations from which you are hit because they have effect in us and all that is true even in the relationship with the people we know.
How little did I listen to my wife and to my friends, in my proud attempt to introduce myself, with no real desire to listen to others ... I am now account for how well it would make me sit quietly and absorb the thoughts expressed in the words of those who stood beside me, instead of suppress any opinion that was not mine.
For this new vision of life I must sincerely thank my doctor, that in addition to relieving with great professionalism my physical suffering, he immediately treated me like a man and taught me to courageously face the harsh reality ...
I still have a vivid memory of our first meeting. While I was expressing my anxiety with fear of pain and death, he stood in silence, looking into my eyes and participating with mild and quiet sadness of my situation; then when I finished talking, the silence continued a few seconds, as if the doctor wanted to settle in if my thoughts and then he told me:
"I do not fear the pain, because we have all the weapons to defeat him ...
Together then we can deal with her fears and now will no longer feel alone, because it will have next to another man, albeit indirect experience, knows what she's feeling and doing everything possible to accompany this hard experience of life ... "
These few words I gave him a prolonged moment of inner peace and I thought that maybe, medicine could not be just a job, but also a courageous openness to all human beings, a preparation of the heart and mind first of all to participate in the sufferings of others and only second to defeat them with all the means available ...


So now, I have learned to live with my cancer, I imagine, like an unexpected visitor, inappropriate, but can not live without me, which totally depends on my very existence. My death will lead to his death and while after him will be only the hard thing of evil gone, I will continue to exist as the man who had the courage to face him and look him in the eyes, to the end ...

DAVIDE VOLPI