Giovanna Spantigati

Watching the news trying not to get involved ...
Sometimes watching the news can be really dangerous if you do not keep the suitable distance from them. Fake doctors, non-graduates, doctors who made wrong diagnosis ... Television news tell about the story of a girl who had been on a wheelchair for years because a doctor made the wrong diagnosis on her disability. Yet, she had a sneaking suspicion which took her to go to another medical advice and found out that the diagnosis was wrong. She recovers and denounces the first doctor.

I look at my son and instinctively, in a split second, I think of what I have always tried to avoid. "If I took him to another doctor, perhaps the situation might change ... maybe the one who has visited and diagnosed him with his disability was wrong ..." But then I put myself in the shoes of those who cannot accept reality and who, looking at this news think this can happen to them too. Illusions. But what is reality? Reality is tough. Before my son was born I had been subjected to a medical treatment. Was it the cause of his premature birth? I will never know but that's the way it is.

Reality is that when he was born he wasn't taken to the intensive care unit the next day because they thought he would not survive. Reality is that while he was in hospital a virus had spread and this could be the cause of his deafness. But reality is also that I got pregnant a second time, a baby girl was born and this was marvelous. Reality is that there were no therapies, medical interventions, touch, physical contact that my child would accept. Yet, as his sister grew up, he accepted her love, and her stimulus. Without even knowing her, without knowing who or what it was. But he accepted her purest love.

Reality is that life has its own magical path and it has no sense if we to try to interfere or to control it ... Yet we can choose whether to be leading actors or spectators in our lives. I didn't blame any doctor, I didn't report any nurse, although when I was in hospital they didn't called me by name but "the risking abortion". I decided not to get angry. I don't feel helpless or victim. Instead, I looked at the miracle that was happening before my eyes. I chose to encourage him, to remove the armor of fear, to learn the mystery of life. And when I asked, a short time ago to my son, "Do you ever think about your future?" He said, calm, : "Future and past make me sad. I think of the present." With a smile, with the wonder of those who live each day as if it were always the first.


Giovanna Spantigati