Paloma and Maria Jose, Maria Jose and Paloma.

I have met Paloma today. Maria Jose, 20 years ago.

Paloma was admitted in to the ICU four years ago, as Maria Jose. Paloma, because of an acute coronary syndrome. Maria Jose for serious complications in twin births.

Paloma, volunteer of Mensajeros de Salud, says, step by step, what Cristina Cifuentes described a few days ago. But Paloma never has read, or even know who Cristina is. “I needed to identify people who attended me.” “I was not a person, I was a disease.” “Not knowing the name of who is treating you is an added SUFFERING.” “Noises and devices that I do not know.” “Hermetic”. “I am convinced to stay at the verge of death.” “I ask you two things: avoid my PAIN and give me a measured treatment.”

Maria Jose, intensivist, fourteen days of uncertainty, but she knew that this was going. She suffered for the patient in the bed located on her right: dystocia in the delivery of a very immature babt one Christmas Eve. By midafternoon someone tells her: “Your son is dead.” Both, Maria Jose and that woman, spent that night crying: one for the lost son, and Maria José because of knowing how a child is loved and the absolute vacuum that piercing cry evidenced in SUFFERING without remedy.

Aristotle, in “Rhetoric” describes pleasure and pain as the “condition of the soul that warns the VALUE of LIFE itself.” And our friendly samio Epicurus, that “……they are the result of the realization or impairment of appetites.”



But there is a phrase in “The Book of Secrets” by Deepak Chopra summarizing every thing told until here: “PAIN PASS, SUFFERING MAINTAINS”.

Thank you.

Felix José Martin Gallardo.
swx20088@gmail.com