Imagine this. You are a dreamy person, full of life, and your family is your driving force. You work as a seamstress, which means you make and repair clothes. You love your job like nothing else in the
world.
Your income is enough to support your children, and you don’t have to worry about making ends meet.
One day, just like any other, you start to feel stiffness in your hands. You feel pain, desperation and a lot of helplessness. Your works are not done correctly, and you finish your orders at the wrong time. Your dream, little by little, fades away.
You quit your sewing job, and you start working in a textile factory. You have experience, and you think it will be the same, but it is not.
Because of the ergonomic conditions of your job, your back becomes more and more hunched, making you have to use a cane to walk.
The managers of the place fire you because you no longer perform well at work.
Working at something you love is now just a memory. Gradually, you stop doing activities at home. Your sons consider you a burden, although they don’t tell you so.
You fall into a deep depression, because you no longer feel useful.
Your blood pressure increases, your blood sugar levels rise like a rocket ship on its way to space.
Your lumbar discs lose their place. Your legs swell up like water balloons, and your thyroid stops regulating your weight. Your rheumatoid arthritis not only truncates your dreams, it takes away your hopes.
Staying alive becomes a daily agony. All that remains for you to do is to cling to God, hoping for the best in Him and trusting that all this suffering you are going through will not be in vain.
This story is about Luisa Moreno, an elderly woman whose dreams and aspirations in life were snatched away by her multiple diseases. She did not know that her faith in Christ would lead her to recover the hope she had lost.
The Social Outreach Ministry – dedicated to meeting the needs of the community – alerted the Health Program — oblate volunteer doctors, nurses, and specialists serving people who cannot access decent medical care — about Luisa’s condition.
Immediately, the Health Program team went to her house to do a health evaluation; they found her sad and resigned.
Her daughter, who has tried to help her throughout this process, says that her mother’s depression has caused her not to follow her treatments properly, and that, in order not to worry her family, she has left her state of health in complete neglect. In tears, he told her: “Mom, please don’t let yourself die; I want you to see your grandson grow up.”
Currently, she is undergoing treatment prescribed by our doctors and is given weekly physiotherapy sessions completely free of charge, which has given her a lot of improvement. She can now do her own things, her hands are responsive, and her vital signs are stable.
She is extremely grateful for the selfless support she received from the Oblates.
Magaly Trejo, physical therapist of the Health Program, who has treated Luisa since we met her, mentioned:
“To me, in my classes, I was taught that older adults should not be helped because they are more dead than alive… but supporting them, means giving them a second chance.”
In the photograph from left to right: Magaly (Physiotherapist), Luisa Moreno and Nadia (Nurse)
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