Acceptance

Italian

In all my memories of the illness, the worst personal violation was not about the therapies and their collateral effects, though horrible, and which in some cases remain now, four years later.

I was then in one of the moments of “super work”, with sleepless nights, non existent lunches, and with eyes which begged for pity after too many hours in front of the computer.
In the middle of it all, my immune system went into “tilt”.

With no advance warning, I found myself is a strange unknown place, full of white sheets, nurses wearing greenish face masks, exams, blood tests... endless silences in the shadows of lowered window shades and the always annoying neon lights.

Before then, I'd rarely seen a hospital from the inside. I'd visited someone from time to time, but only for half an hour. This time was different. The sick person in the bed was me. The gazes of the doctors had a different expression than what I'd noticed before. Their look vacillated between professional detachment and human contact.

I felt that I was disturbing them... that I was taking the place of someone who really had a serious problem.
I had no idea what was wrong, and could not have imagined it at all.
My thoughts were about work, and the thousands of things still to accomplish.
How would I get to the weekend if I could not move from there?

The diagnosis felt like a lethal blow: leukemia.

I knew nothing about the illness. I knew nothing about the hospital. I knew nothing at all.
Yet, there I was, with a fever which was elevated to the point where both my head and my eyes became foggy.
I continued to think about when I could return to the office and take care of my own things…
That thought was a last grasp of normality in the midst of a whirlpool of bad news dragging me downward.

Having to let go of that grasp was the moment of my worst violation.
I realized that this was not going to be brief, that instead it was destined to be long and painful.
That work had to wait. That my life had to wait.
That even my existence was no longer a sure thing.

From healthy to seriously ill.
From living to surviving.

How I struggled to accept that new condition.

The awareness that there was another world, beyond what I had known.
It was made of pain, small steps, hope, therapies and prayers.
In this world, the time passes slowly and there are long hours to simply think.

Despite it all, the mind remains lucid in this world. After bolting away like a wild horse, the mind calms and convinces you that this is, after all, a new challenge, a difficult test, and a large obstacle to overcome.
The difficult phase will be long, and you will want to cry. But, you can cry while walking and while moving forward.

Affronting a monster, especially an unexpected one, is never easy.
Yet, from the moment in which you change your visual you enter into the right mentality.
From that moment, you can consider yourself ready for the fight.

And to win.