Stations of the Cross of a Sick Venezuelan

Since next February 11 (the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes) is the 21st World Day of the Sick, I would like to write today a simple Way of the Cross about what the experience of illness can mean for some people here in our beloved Venezuela.

Being chronically ill with a degenerative disease of the spine for nearly forty years has led me to live and feel many things that I want to share today, especially with those who are going through an illness, or who suffer at the side of someone who is ill.

STATION I: The discomfort begins. Age doesn’t matter. Sometimes pain comes at a very young age. We don’t understand what we have or why. The rounds of the different specialists begin. The way of the cross of waiting for hours in doctors’ offices begins. We bring our school backpacks to study, or a book, which will be great company, along with whoever is with us at the appointment where the doctors will try to see what we have. We go into the office; they take our history, examine us, prescribe a painkiller and order tests. We pay. We get home exhausted.

STATION II: The calls begin, to different centers, to find out the cost of the tests we were ordered. We dial hundreds of times. Once again we need patience for the call to go through, and for them to give us an appointment as soon as possible. We need those tests fast, so the doctor can tell us why we feel unwell. At this point we may find prices ranging from charitable to extremely expensive. We keep waiting.

STATION III: The days of the tests arrive. We get up at dawn to try not to have so many people ahead of us, above all if we want lower prices. Even so, at least ten people or more are already in the waiting room (many have come from the provinces). That is when we begin to see all kinds of cases and think that ours is not the worst. We take out our book and, with patience, settle down to wait with our little number. Wait to hand in the test order. Wait to pay the bill (which goes up more and more every week). Wait to go in.

STATION IV: They call us. We jump out of our seats and quickly put the book away. We go in. Depending on the person, they treat us with more or less humanity (I can say that here in Venezuela most of the staff who attend us are very kind): “Take off all your clothes and put on this gown! Lie down here! Relax! Don’t move! Don’t breathe! Breathe!” Meanwhile, we are freezing to death. With the pain we have, the cold feels like a dagger stabbing us everywhere. But we breathe and endure. We get dressed and once again arrive home exhausted! Patience.

STATION V: A new appointment with the doctor. Today we leave even earlier, to see if we can have fewer patients ahead of us. We arrive at 5 a.m. and have only three ahead of us. By 5:30 there are more than thirty on the waiting list. Appointments given in order of arrival are hard, very hard, on the sick. I don’t know why doctors don’t understand that. After two hours (at least) we go in, and they give us the diagnosis and the list of medicines we have to buy. Many of those medicines will cause other problems in the long run, and we will have to see other doctors. Now begins the odyssey of finding the money to buy the medicines we hope to find (because many are out of stock). We get home tired again. We collapse on the bed (diagnosis in hand) and begin to think that we won’t be able to do what we used to do, that we will be limited. That is when the pain sharpens and it dawns on us that we are sick and that we have to be strong to live with our illness. A few tears, or many, slip out. We try not to let anyone see.

STATION VI: If surgery is needed, things get worse and will require more patience. Pre-op tests, insurance paperwork (if we have insurance); if we don’t, we start looking into foundations, or set up a crowdfunding page, or something of the kind. The night before, we don’t sleep at all, thinking about what will happen. We leave for the clinic before dawn so we won’t have to wait long at Admissions. They give us the room, we put on the gown, and the gurney arrives. Usually, when we are on the gurney, a tear slips out, or several. But we wipe them away quickly. We begin to feel the merciless cold of the operating room. The nurse arrives and begins: “Relax while I put in the catheter. Don’t move. Help me out here…” We stare, absorbed, at that round lamp full of lights, and that is when we begin to ask God with all the strength of our hearts to help us, not to abandon us, to let everything go well. The culminating moment for me is when they lay us on the icy operating table with our arms outstretched and nothing on. There you feel just like Christ on the Cross, exactly, though of course keeping all due distance from what was done to Our Lord Jesus Christ.

STATION VII: We wake up in the recovery room. The pain there is tremendous, especially if we have the bad luck (as I did in my last operation two years ago) that there are no strong painkillers to give us. After a while they take us to the room where our family or friends are waiting. What would the sick do without their families, without their friends! Many have stayed in the room praying. Thanks to God, and to the good doctors, everything went well. But we are in a lot of pain. They give us more painkiller (if there is any), and we are very thirsty, but we can’t drink water yet. Patience. Six more hours before we can have a little glass of water. We thank God that everything went well. That day is a little hard, because we can’t get up and everything has to be done from the bed; we depend completely on someone else. How hard that is for those of us who thought we were super independent! It is a great lesson in humility. Morning comes and the doctor comes to see us. Everything went well, and we have to get up. The incision (or incisions!) burns, but onward: the worst is over, and now we are being pampered and kept company by our loved ones, which helps us recover faster. What would a sick person do without the support of family and friends!

STATION VIII: It is time to leave the clinic, and you have to ask for the bill very early so you don’t have to wait so long. Even so, we wait hours to leave. We check the bill, and the number of things they charge you for is astonishing. Our greatest wish is to get home. There they are waiting to look after us and care for us. And we begin to feel like a burden. How hard it is to let ourselves be helped! But we are learning to do it, and we have to keep going because (we think) the worst is over. Time to eat and take the thousand prescribed pills. Time for bed; we sleep two hours at a stretch, or less. We try not to bother anyone. We cry in silence. The worst is behind us now, and God will help us recover soon and bear our limitations with patience.

STATION IX: Day dawns and night falls, day after day, and we are still shut in, keeping to our rest. Operations vary. But those of us who have had long recoveries know what it is to look at the calendar every day when we get up and cross off the days with a pencil, waiting for the great day (which we mark with a huge colored circle) when we can go outside. Meanwhile, we content ourselves with watching the orchid a dear friend brought us slowly open, which becomes our greatest joy day by day. Because in those moments we can neither read nor write; we can only pray and offer our pain for others.

STATION X: We get through the recovery and can go outside. But we are no longer the same. Now we see the world differently, people differently. Our hearts have grown so wide that every time we see a sick person we feel immense compassion and want to give them all our help. Some of us begin to ask that all illnesses always come to us and never to a child or a spouse, because suffering yourself is hard, but seeing a loved one suffer must, I think, be even more heartbreaking.

STATION XI: We live several very good months and thank God every second. We no longer see the trees the same way, or the leaves, or the flowers, or the moon, or the sun, or the sea… Now we see everything as more beautiful, different, full of light. We continue with the doctor’s instructions and have to schedule new appointments for checkups. We try as much as possible to follow the medical instructions and restrictions, but it is hard, very hard, especially if our illness limits our work.

STATION XII: The months go by, the year, or the years, and the same cycle repeats itself. Discomfort, appointments, waiting, tests, waiting and more waiting (always accompanied by our books and our loved ones), another operation, insurance paperwork, recovery. But by now we are stronger and more expert at this. We have more patience and cry less. But the older we get, the more cowardly we become, and every time someone mentions the word surgery we tremble and think with terror of the recovery.

STATION XIII: In the end, when the cycle of our life is over, we will see how illness helped us see life with different eyes and with greater sensitivity. Patience was the key word in our learning; there’s a reason we are called patients. Humility was another essential word on that road of seeing ourselves limited and accepting that we have to depend on others, even while we are still young.

STATION XIV: And discovering that we could offer our pain to God for other people was the greatest thing that could have happened to us. We discovered that illness has very great value in the eyes of God, and that if we know how to bear illness in a Christian way we can be joyful in the midst of so much suffering and difficulty. We learned that thanks to those who accompanied us and cared for us, we were able to pull through. Because loving and caring for a sick person is the greatest love that can be given in this life. A sick person who is loved has no words to describe what that means. And always remember, my dear sick friends, even if we cannot understand it humanly, the sick are the Lord’s favorites, and in Heaven there will be no more tears, no more pain, no more suffering, only eternal Love and Happiness.