I got sick in May 2011: a lymphoma.\u00a0Usually in these cases, It might seem like a tragedy. Not for me. I don\u2019t know why. I was calm. I told myself that it was a disease like many others.<\/p>\n
I underwent all cycles of chemotherapy and after I went into the sterilized room for the transplant. In that moment my disease was detected with precision: a mantle cell lymphoma stage four B. The lymphatic system was completely compromised. The doctor said to me: “Fabrizio, this disease is, unfortunately, incurable. What we can do is trying to preserve your life as long as possible\u201d.<\/p>\n
Once learned what I was suffering, I began to search informations in the web, and it was a disaster.<\/p>\n
In that time I attended a Benedictine monastery. Sometimes, when i was too much stressed because of work, I drived the car to that monastery. In a room, in complete silence, I liked spending three or four days with those monks, who were so quiet and discreet. I became friend of Pierre, a religious suffering from multiple sclerosis and therefore forced on a wheelchair. When I told him what it happened to me, he told me about the Sacrament of the Sick. He said: “Take this Sacrament, it’s a beautiful thing, it is useful not only to the body, but also to the soul.” I welcomed his invitation. I had to decide where to receive it.<\/p>\n
At that time Andrea Polidoro, a dear friend of mine, was walking his first Cammino, the Via de la Plata, so I said to me: I go to walk!\u00a0My wife Dominique did not oppose. I immediately bought the ticket. Few days after, I was walking.<\/p>\n
I went out of the sterilized room, I had very low immunity, I was protecting me from external attacks with a mask, I had to be careful with other people, I was forced to eat canned food. He had become a non-life.<\/p>\n
I was interested in the Camino de Santiago a few years before, but when you are working hard, leaving for a month is something almost impossible to achieve. After learning more in different websites to understand what I needed, May 6, 2012, I was in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. Unconsciously, perhaps…<\/p>\n
When I got off the plane, I removed the little mask from my face and I said: \u201cStop! I\u2019m not ill\u201d. You can\u2019t start to walk to Santiago worrying about what you eat, what you do, every place you go: in that way you can\u2019t fully live the experience.<\/p>\n
To be honest: the first day the climb was really hard, I thought I would die! But there I had a very important meeting. When I stopped to eat, a man came up to me. His name was Pierre.<\/p>\n
Pierre has never left me, he accompanied me up to the Plaza del Obradoiro in Santiago.<\/p>\n
I want to say that I went to Santiago with my legs! But I was taken, escorted, cared for by a group of people who seemed to have a definite job to do: take me to the goal.<\/p>\n
I walked, the days passed and I was getting better. Usually on the way you toil. I saw people who abandoned, which stopped with foot pain, tendinitis. I have not even had a bladder. I was fine.<\/p>\n
I was started with the main intention of receiving the Sacrament of the Sick. Every late afternoon I was going to Mass, regularly, and sometimes I asked to the priests if there was a chance to take that sacrament in Santiago. They replied that I would be arriving in early June, in the midst of thousands of other pilgrims, with the ever full cathedral. They told me it was impossible.<\/p>\n
I was resigning. But the Walk gives you what you need. So one day I found myself walking with a Sicilian boy in shorts and shirt, and we started talking. Why you are going to Santiago? And on the way tongues are loosened easily.<\/p>\n
I told him my story and why I was on a pilgrimage. To my surprise the guy was a Franciscan, and he told to me that he would have given that sacrament in Santiago.<\/p>\n
It happened: after walking a few days together, he preceded me in the arrival in the city, and when I reached the goal of my journey, I really got what I was started for: he gave me the Sacrament of the Sick in the Cathedral of Santiago.<\/p>\n
The party with all the friends met on the way was beautiful.<\/p>\n
Santiago was just my first destination.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This is just the beginning of a long and fascinating story, narrated in the book \u201cCamminare guarisce\u201d (Edizioni dei Cammini, 2016) by Fabrizio Pepini and curated by Massimiliano Cremona, also purchasable at the link in this blog.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Photo by Ornella Gabrielli<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I got sick in May 2011: a lymphoma.\u00a0Usually in these cases, It might seem like a tragedy. Not for me. I don\u2019t know why. I was calm. I told myself that it was a disease like many others. I underwent all cycles of chemotherapy and after I went into the sterilized room for the transplant. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/camminareguarisce.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/camminareguarisce.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/camminareguarisce.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camminareguarisce.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camminareguarisce.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=766"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/camminareguarisce.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6136,"href":"https:\/\/camminareguarisce.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766\/revisions\/6136"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camminareguarisce.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/camminareguarisce.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camminareguarisce.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camminareguarisce.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}