2023-07-19 20:19:00
Pablo lost both legs in a car accident in January 2015 and there he began to value his health and his life in a different way, he was able to quickly accept what had happened to him and move on without giving up.
—Pablo, what comes to mind when you talk about health?
—When I think of health, I think of balance, of the need to stay in that place where our body, our mind, our social, family, work, and sports environment find the balance that gives us that feeling of well-being, of peace, and when I think of my health, the more I cling to sports. Sport one day saved my life and today it makes it quality. It improves my physical health, my mental health, the spiritual, the social, it gives me that harmony that we need as human beings to be well.
—You mentioned mental health, do you consider it a key factor?
—Yes, I believe that mental health is key, but in case the mind and our intellect are in perfect condition, our “mental attitude” is a key factor, which has to do with willpower, with a different way of facing challenges. How do we stand up to the goals or dreams ahead of us?
Albert Einstein said “there is a driving force, more powerful than steam, electricity and atomic energy. The will”… I am convinced that willpower replaces any part of the body. In my case, it is literal, but in any case, willpower will allow us to overcome adversity, and it will also allow something much better, which is to achieve goals that at first may seem impossible.
That willpower has to do with our mental health and it is a great engine that needs the purest and most powerful of fuels, HUMAN FUEL. This is the family, friends, co-workers or training, is the reader of this note.
—Tell me how you link health and well-being from your place, being a person who went through a critical moment?
After going through a critical moment, such as losing both legs in a car accident in January 2015, in which you could have died, you begin to value health and life like never before. And that first lesson was given to me by my family, but especially by my parents. When I was 19 years old, my 18-year-old sister Ana Laura decided to take her own life. It was a tremendous blow between us, but for my father and mother it was even worse.
My dad always said that if you lose your parents, you are an “orphan”, if you lose a wife, you are a widow, but losing a child has no name, it is the maximum pain someone can feel.
With all of this, when my parents saw me without my legs, but without my life being in danger, they were happy and I’m sure they thought: “later we’ll see how we solve the problem with his legs, but Pablo will be with us on his birthday, at Christmas, at every family reunion… Pablo is still alive, we can share thousands more mates, hug him, and see him improve every day.” And each improvement, each progress in my state of health, was and is well-being for those around me.
—How did you manage to overcome adversity?
—The “head” again. My sunrise on January 23, 2015, was very different from all the previous ones. I woke up surrounded by machines and different noises, with little cables and hoses connected, nurses and doctors circulating around me, in intensive care. The first thing I did was try to sit up, as if to see what had happened to my legs and I saw how those white sheets, typical of hospitals, fell suddenly, just below my knees. That’s when I finished understanding that I had lost my legs.
But I also remember the first thing I thought: “well, my legs are not going to grow back, what do I do from now on to recover my previous life and start little by little to change those faces of concern that I saw around me? from my family who, from that moment on, were already there with me”. They had traveled from different parts of the country to be by my side, tremendous trips, no one knew who Pablo they were going to meet and what my real state of health was, whether or not my life was in danger.
I was extremely lucky to quickly ACCEPT what had happened, convinced that our life improves when we accept it. Accepting what we cannot change, but also, and much more importantly, accepting the challenge of changing what we can and allows us to improve our quality of life.
—How would you explain to us, in a comprehensive sense, medical care, mental health care, kinesiology, etc?
—I always felt in good hands, from the Lucio Molas Hospital in Santa Rosa, La Pampa, where I ended up the night of the accident and where I stayed for 5 days, and then in Córdoba, at the Vélez Sarsfield Clinic, where I stayed for another 5 days and was discharged. Then, the different rehabilitation processes, the kinesiology prior to having a prosthesis, accompanied by physical training, the luck of falling into the hands of Gustavo Díaz and his team when they equipped me with good prostheses, and all the kinesio and subsequent rehabilitation, learning to walk again and seeing everything I can do today linked to so many sports. The coverage of my social work, accompanying each process. I really believe that with many difficulties and things to improve, Argentina is a place where health is of quality, above all, thanks to our professionals, in the different medical disciplines, who are on a par with the best in the world.
Resilience
—If I tell you resilience, what comes to mind?
—Thousands of reasons come to my mind to be okay, get ahead, overcome obstacles and I can’t think of any reason to give up, give up. As long as I see a chance to improve on something, I try, with love, with passion, wanting to improve myself and at the same time show that it is possible. I feel that as long as we are healthy, there are no excuses not to try.
—What would you say to all those people who consider that having a full and healthy life requires effort?
—Simply that this “effort” ends up being diluted when the result is to be better every day, it is to be able to fully enjoy our life, our family, friends, that job or that profession that we are passionate about, the sport that we like.
—Do you see the world and people in a different way or do you think that you are?
—I see the world from GRATITUDE and from the perspective of positive psychology, where my quality of life improves, being able to distinguish the “real problems” from the simple “circumstances to solve”, that we all have, that we all go through daily, but that does not give us the right to live badly. Quite the opposite.
*By Lic. Guillermo Carranza
#Story #resilience #acceptance