Resilience and disability: “I’m a lucky guy”

2023-11-27 10:05:59

The psychologist Raquel Tomé begins a series of articles under the generic title “Resilience in the face of adversity”, which begins by addressing disability with Pablo Delgado de la Serna, physiotherapist. Raquel Tomé has previously published in EFEsalud the series “Resilience: hand to hand with the virus”, where she analyzed the experience of groups that faced difficult experiences in the covid pandemic.

Resilience and disability: I’m a lucky guy

by Raquel Tomé

Could each of us firmly affirm that: “Life under any circumstances is wonderful”, even if we suffered, for example, from an incurable chronic kidney disease from early childhood, had undergone 31 operations over 47 years of life (three of them a failed kidney transplant), lived with chronic pain and were in waiting list knowing that time is not in our favor?

Could we defend something similar against the widespread belief “Only if I am healthy can I be happy” and shout to the world: “I’m a lucky guy”.

Well, we have interviewed the author of this surprising statement, Pablo Delgado de la Serna, physiotherapist; Sara’s husband, father of a beautiful 4-year-old daughter, Amelia; University professor, with kidney disease since he was six months old and with 81% disability, to explain to us in first person how he manages in his daily life to transform adversity or the difficult experience of being sick and deal with the limitations and the losses to which the severe illness subjects him and yet turn all of this into a splendid opportunity for growth. Not easy.

Resilience and disability: Diary of a transplant recipient

I met Pablo through a book “Diary of a transplant” that more than a book speaks of a way of living, a way of facing life and I let him know this when we met in a sunny cafeteria at the Francisco de Vitoria University in Madrid, one cheerful autumn morning. She reflected in amazement that she could have added the subtitle: “Practical manual of resilience for life” o “Lessons in resilience” because that’s what it’s about, what’s essential, what is invisible to the eyes.

The interview was derailed from the beginning because the one who came asking the questions was him and he asked one of the difficult ones: What do I say to a 4-year-old girl when she asks you: “dad, you’re going to die”?

I confess that I was caught on the wrong foot, so we began more than an interview, a friendly meeting and an absorbing and intense conversation about the transcendent questions of life, those to which each of us must find our answers, those that They help us live a little better and fill life with meaning, such as: can we find meaning in suffering? How do we explain death to a girl? How do we say goodbye if we still want to be here taking care of our loved ones?

Answers that Pablo has been extracting with the patience of a goldsmith from the fertile bowels of life and developed them masterfully in his book, which was born as a literal transcription of some videos recorded in the first onslaught of the pandemic to help his friends imprisoned. anguish and confusion.

He knew a lot about isolation due to his frequent hospitalizations, two or three weeks or so each year. And, he knew that adaptability In the face of change, it is one of those most practical soft skills for our daily lives, and not only as an unequivocal sign of resilience, it is also an intelligence sign, according to scientist Stephen Hawking.

This hopeful book, connected to action, that genuine faculty of working miracles, runs like a good opera in a “crescendo”, starting with reasonable and practical advice in times of pandemic such as, for example: the need to maintain a routine in our daily lives, ordering sleep, eating and doing some exercise begins to raise deeper questions of greater significance that imply an introspection that is only possible when you “stop”, you abstract from the “mundane noise”, you stop running to focus in the present moment and experience life in depth.

Pablo Delgado de la Serna with the psychologist Raquel Tomé/Photo provided

Resilience and disability: The interview

¿Misfortunes are good?

Tolentino Mendonca says that: “Often suffering must first excavate in us the depth that will later fill us with joy.” This statement reflects an entire philosophy of life that I see very clearly. It’s like when something negative turns into a blessing but you don’t know it, you only discover it in the long run. You have to trust that things will serve a purpose.

I also advocate thinking of the “grid metaphor,” as if each of us were a red-hot iron bar in the hands of a forger. Life hits us, it hits us hard, we are stunned and we don’t know why we have to have that suffering. But one day the blows stop, we look in the mirror and discover that without knowing how we have become the most beautiful fence in Castilla. Those blows were only there to get rid of the superfluous and keep the essential. We are the same, but completely different. I don’t think we have to focus so much on finding the why of things but on the why. What has this been used for? What have I learned from this?

¿How do you face the experience of illness and the awareness of death?

We are all going to die, the only thing is that some of us are more aware than others. If we talked about death from a young age we would change our way of living. I was 16 years old when a doctor told me that if I didn’t receive dialysis for a week I would die. At that moment he turned my head because he was in another situation. But over the years you discover that Knowing that death is there improves your life. You enter into the mystique of the present moment, it lightens it because you free yourself from many anxieties and anticipations about the future and you dedicate yourself to living the present moment with intensity, to making the most of it because it is what you have. And also to thank you.

What is happiness?

If there is something that the pandemic has taught us, it is that we can live without all those things that we considered essential. Society sells us ephemeral pleasures as if it were happiness and the people who get hooked the most are those who have the emptiest lives, let’s look for the good. Happiness is an arduous path, but it can be achieved and try to make difficult situations turn us into better people.

You say that if you handle your situation better than other people it is because you have made a great personal effort, that you do not stop working within yourself. What is the role of attitude? Do you believe that human beings are co-creator of their destiny and their life?

Life is not how it comes but how we face it. We cannot always be analyzing things and keeping the negative aspects of the experiences. We have to look for the golden nuggets, always look for the positive. Give time for reflection and meditation every day of all those extraordinary things we have. For example, I have a wonderful woman who has chosen to be with a sick person, my parents, my brothers, my daughter have not been able to choose it, but she chooses me every day. That’s extraordinary. Giving thanks for having people who love us and those we love, who give us support, a health system that allows us to do dialysis every day. In another place in the world this would not be the case. It is important to be grateful. Being able to be happy is essentially an attitude.

What place does spirituality occupy in your life?

It is very important because it has allowed me to give a transcendent vision of all these experiences. Where perhaps there is an afterlife where all this is useful for something or when I am not here, feel that I can continue taking care of my family from another place.

A good way to know what is important to each of us in life is to ask ourselves: If we were told the date on which we were going to die, how would we live?

Pablo Delgado de la Serna with his wife, Sara, and his daughter Amelia/Courted photo

Paul’s clarity

Pablo Delgado de la Serna He is clear about it and wisely urges us to explore putting into practice aspects such as:

* To thank

* Look for the positive

* Focus on what we can do

* Look to the future with hope,

* Try to be optimistic

* Appreciate the small things that make us grow

* Practice understanding

* Be patient and connect with “the times” and the “natural processes” that things have

* Take perspective of what has been experienced

*Assess the present moment

Because, at the end of the day, every time we think about the most relevant achievements we have achieved in life and take note of the strengths we put into practice, we inaugurate a vital pattern. And this transforms us in RESILIENT people, full of vital meaning. In the case of Paul with such intensity that he embodies the beautiful and heroic phrase of Saint Teresa: “Let us live in such a way that we are not afraid of dying.”

Cover of the book by Pablo Delgado de la Serna