ALS patients. Choosing to live loving the cross of JesusPablo, chronically ill since he was six years old, a transplant patient, on permanent dialysis and with an amputated leg, has undergone almost forty operations and the leg that still remains he does not know how long it will last. However, if there is one thing he transmits, it is the joy of living and gratitude to God for each day.
A conversation with this professor of the Francisco de Vitoria University and researcher is something like a heart dialysis: it fills those who come into contact with him with hope and "clean blood".
Perhaps for that reason, he never stops smiling, and together with "a transplant recipient"You will always find a smile that accompanies each of their stories, whether they are hard and full of physical pain or the kind and funny ones starring Amelia, part of their SAP team (Sara - Amelia - Pablo).
You must have been asked a thousand times, but how do you live so happily, having seen death in the face so many times?
-I get up every day and have breakfast with my wife and daughter, I take my daughter to school. I have three passions: teaching, healing in my practice and lecturing, I do all three and I get paid for it. I always eat with my wife or with my parents.
That's happiness. Simple things.
The disease takes away your dreams, but it forces you to live day by day. I have left an unreal future, a dream, in exchange for a present that is real. There is no point in being bitter about what I am not.
Does the day-to-day life have complicated moments?
-Shortly after meeting her, Sara said to me: "How are you feeling? I answered: "Look, I never feel well. I don't know what a day without pain, without tiredness is like"....
In the end, you don't analyze it. I take advantage of the time I feel better and rest the time I feel worse. Because besides, it is not going to get better, in case of doubt it is going to get worse. I believe that when we have a big problem, the small ones disappear. I deal worse with the small things than with the big ones. They tell me: "We have to cut off your leg". Well, you focus, get rid of nonsense and focus on what's important. I deal worse with an earache.
Since I was 16 years old, my body is not autonomous. It is normal that if I die now, Amelia will not remember me very much. That weighs on me. But I have a booka blogI think that this way he could get to know who his father was and how he thought. And deep down I think that things will come when they have to come. You have to squeeze the present. What I do is to prepare myself, spiritually, in conscience.
I would love to die at 100 years old with a good head, but since it is not in my power, I live it with peace. What I don't do is waste time with what is not in my hand.
-Do you think you'd get along the same way without faith?
-No, no way. I wouldn't see any sense in my life without faith. If my life ends the day I die, what need do I have to live all this, which is neither pleasant nor comfortable? In fact, 99.9 % of the people who tell me they have it bad, are not Catholics. Well, I specify, they are not believers. A little while ago I did a master's degree in counseling and there are two legs that a patient needs to recover: spirituality and hope. Spirituality is fundamental.
You say you don't know what a day is without pain. That psalm, "Out of the depths I cry out to you, Lord," could apply to you perfectly. How do you cry out to God from the depths?
-Well, for years I have had the feeling that I signed a blank check and I no longer ask, I give thanks. There is a saying that I love: "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans".
First, my illness does not allow me to plan many things. We had not even planned Easter Week, because we did not know if I was going to be hospitalized. I have not been hospitalized for a month now, neither in the emergency room nor operated on, and that means that it will be my turn soon. You learn to live day by day, which, in the end, is the most beautiful thing.
The gospel of our wedding was that of "every day has its day". And I find it beautiful, because it says: "What are you worrying about, if the birds of the field eat? We lack faith. Deep down we lack confidence. What has to come, will come. And whatever has to come, if we really have God with us, it will come with the grace and the strength to bear it.
One of the things you say is that you, your siblings or your parents, the disease "touched" you, but Sara "chose" it. How did you explain to Sara that she was going to have a life that was anything but easy?
-Well, Sara is very smart, and it didn't take much explaining to her. I lied to her, I say this ironically, I lied to her because I didn't know half of the things that would come later. I told her, shortly after we met: "Listen, my life is going to be very complicated, because I'm going to lose a kidney and I'm going to have to go on dialysis". Period. I didn't count on having my leg cut off, on having a tumor, on anything.
One day he told me: "Look, I don't know if I'll be up to it, but I'll always be there". And I thought, "Wow, that's great". And then, she is very strong, she is very practical. The day it's her turn, she cries, and then she rises again, like a phoenix. It's very easy to have a person like that by your side. There are days when she has to pull the whole cart, because I can't do it.
Can a person who is sick feel like a burden?
-The feeling of burden is there, and it's a very hard feeling. It's very complicated. I have stolen a lot of happiness from my parents. They are happy to do it, but now that I am a father and nothing has happened to my daughter, I don't even want to think what it is like for your daughter to lose a kidney, to have a leg cut off... I don't even want to imagine it. I have robbed my siblings of their childhood... And Sara has suffered so many times. It is not easy.
The last two years I have not gone on vacation with them, because it is such a hassle to carry out dialysis, that in the end it is better for the two of them to go and I stay here. So, they leave with the burden that I am staying, etc. That is a bit of a burden.
We don't need big things to be happy, just the three of us. On Amelia's fourth birthday, which was in December, we told her: "Amelia, tell us what plan you want to make, we'll make it, whatever you want". She said, "Just the three of us. That's life.
The problem is that we fill ourselves with fireworks and needs that make us unhappy, but that's because we get involved in that stuff. I can't go skiing, but I don't live thinking that I have to go skiing. I can't go in summer to I don't know where, because I don't live thinking about that. We spend more time thinking about what we can't do, or what we would like to do, than what we have.
If we were aware of what we have and lived anchored to that, we would be much happier.
When a person is a believer, does he/she despair? How does he/she get out of that despair?
-I don't fall into despair, the truth is that I don't fall into despair. Sometimes I have uncertainty, sometimes I have regret... And in fact that's one of the good things about having faith, that I don't fall into despair.
We lack confidence. If we are supposed to be thought from eternity, there is a reason why we are living what we are living. I have realized that the disease helped me to have blind faith.
It has been hard for me to get here, I have not had it all my life. In fact, I have had times of a very cold faith, and of not understanding it. Of asking myself: What good God sends this? One day I understood that God does not send us anything. I believe that faith is a gift, but it is a job. If we like U2, we know all the songs of U2, if we like Madrid, all the statistics, if we like a person, we know all his life. We have a faith and we know nothing about God... I was impressed, when I went to Kenya to treat people, that there were Muslims who knew the Koran perfectly well. And I have met Jews who know the Torah. We have no idea about the Bible. And I know that it is not enough just to know it by heart, then you have to know how to apply it, but knowing it by heart is already a step to know. In the end, what we lack is confidence.
And then I learned that a cross embraced weighs less than dragged. No one will take my cross away from me. And God does not send me a cross that I do not have the strength to carry. And if on top of that I love it... Love it not in the masochistic sense of "I want more", but in the sense of "I can only be Pablo Delgado, and I want to be Pablo Delgado". That day, I do not say that it becomes light, but it weighs infinitely less.
How do you explain your suffering to your daughter?
-Well, she teaches me. When I came home from the hospital with my leg amputated, I told her: "Amelia, what do you think? And I show her the leg and a half. She says, "Dad, it's not here, it's not bruised". And he started clapping his hands. I thought, "That's the way to go. They've taken away my pain.
Or one day, when they told me I had the tumor, Sara said to me: "Are you going to tell Amelia today? And I told her: "Well, I don't have the strength today". Then, when we were playing, she asked me: "Dad, are you sick? I answered: "I'm sick every day, and today a little more, I'm just tired". And he said to me: "Well, I'll take your leg off". When I am tired and stressed I take off my leg. She had realized that something was wrong with me and she had related it to my health. She didn't know I had a tumor, obviously, but she had understood what was going on with me.
In January I had another major operation and, talking to Amelia, I was suddenly in tears. One of the options was to go wrong, not to go out, or to go out with no legs (without the other one). And Amelia, just turned four, grabbed my hand, looked me in the eyes and said, "Dad, fathers don't cry. They look up to Heaven and pray." I stayed...
When you defend life, what are you defending?
-People don't want to patients because he doesn't want to be sick. In the end it is a fear. I defend life with an 81 % handicap, that is to say, my body is theoretically worthless, and I am absolutely happy, I lead an absolutely full and above all absolutely dignified life. And for me a dignified death does not mean dying earlier, it means being able to die with my wife and daughter by my side. What happens is that it bothers. And the State... They do not want to talk about the socioeconomic cost of the disease. I am very expensive to the Social Security.
I know more bitter people who have everything to be happy than bitter sick people. Because in a situation like that you get rid of everything secondary. It's not that the secondary is bad, but sometimes we put it on a level of the scale of values that makes us bitter.
The more you learn to let go, the more you learn to be happy. And illness helps you do that.
