My dear friends,
Dr. Getulio
“This is truly unbelievable! Just completely unbelievable. Just like you can refuse a doctor I can refuse a patient. I want to say something very serious to you. If you do not take your medicine I will not be your doctor anymore. I can’t take this anymore Julieta! You are beautiful, intelligent, brilliant! Why did you not take your pills Ju! Why?”
Dr. Getulio entered my life as the neurologist who was to explain me why was it that my brain was destructing itself. It has been now almost 6 years that he entered my life. I was terrified at first because what I could possibly have was multiple sclerosis. For the past I never really knew much about Multiple Sclerosis, but it terrified me. For the last 6 years I know Dr. Getulio I have been on epilepsy medicine. Since I was first admitted to Hospital six years ago I have embarked on a journey to attempt to try to understand what had happened to me.
Multiple Sclerosis became eventually a long faded possibility. You all have now read my last episode. I woke up paralyzed one morning and that is not why Dr. Getulio is furious with me. He is furious because of “now”. This week, just as I am about to print this book which has been put together in a very short time, with the help of all of my friends I just decided to stop my epilepsy pills because I visited a doctor that said that that was a possibility.
I did not follow the advice of that doctor fully either. He was a homeopath and he told me I could stop. I should have waited and should have been more cautious, I should have done it properly, I should have reduced it cautiously. But being me, always so willing to ditch allopathy I just stopped the medicine all together on my own way.
I was playing piano to a friend, Eduardo Simanthob, a brilliant poet and writer (and who is now one of the editors of this book) when suddenly I had too much energy in me. I do not remember anything anymore. I seized. I hurt my whole body in that fit. I was once more admitted to hospital and it is because of that that Dr, Getulio, my family and my friends are now furious. For once in my lifetime, I was actually not scared of the seizure. I felt protected.
“ I have no idea what caused all the rest that happened to you Julieta. I don’t know why you lost myelin in your brain. I do not know why your tongue one day was paralyzed. All exams show absolutely nothing. But there is one thing I am certain of, and that is that you are epileptic. I am not sure what caused the loss of myelin in your brain 6 years ago but that has left a focus of epilepsy. You do not not need to do anything but take one pill a day to control this! Why can’t you do it?”
Dr. Getulio is a brilliant doctor. He is trusted by all. I trust him. And I have just decided to add him here as my last super character. He is not here because he is a brilliant doctor, I chose to put him here because he changed something structural on the way I think this week.
I decided to write this book so that we all could live better, so that we would not have to quit the world. I always knew I should write a book, but I have never fully known what it should be about. In a conversation with my friend Paula Gabriel, we concluded we both, who are nice people had been quite suicidal. We wondered what was happening, that so many people were so unhappy? Paula pondered that we had been born seeing cartoons of the future, and that now we were all terrified with the collapse of the world. Suddenly, we all wanted to be present. Paula and I always talked about how this form of being present, just to satisfy egoic chemical releases left us in the end completely lost, alone, and disconnected.
When my book eventually came about, I knew I wanted to write a book so that we, people, who cared for others, we most of us genrous people, , could find a way to sstop wanting to quit the worldt. My answer, or the beginning of it seemed to be in gentleness, in more care of those around.
This week when I seized, and could deal so well with the pain of the attack that must have been something wrong. I realised my feeling ok with the attack was almost as a total lack of care for life just like my previous wanting to die phase. As I was about to print this book, a book where I call for a more caring world, my body reminded me one more time that we live in a physical world. I realised that when I attempt to negate allopathy altogether to have cures that come solely from ideas, or beliefs I once again quit the world and the human experience. I forget the absolute importance of those around me. When I do not take my medicine, I realise, I do not value the work of so many people I deeply respect, I do not value my own life, when I do not take the medicine I quit the world.
I have a body that is having unnecessary pain now because of an ideological choice I made. I can deal with the pain well now. Those around me do not deserve to go through this pain. So I add Dr Getulio here as a way to apologize to all. In an act to understand that my life is precious and worth to be lived in its best way. As an act of realization that in not taking simple measures to prevent harm to myself I hurt myself and others.
DR. Getulio embodies to me an abandonment of my total idealism.
“ I speak as a friend nor as a doctor Julieta. I will one day write a book. Though I am a neurologist. I confess I believe most diseases are psychosomatic. One day I will write a book about that.”
I am sure he will. I am sure it will be a brilliant book. And I hope I can be part of this book. Dr. Getulio is a friend. Someone I did not meet before these six years but someone who has been always a friend. Someone who has called me daily on my cel phone to know how I was, when I begged to leave Hospital.
Thank you Dr. Getulio, Thank you. I promised I will take the medicine everyday for as long as you believe it is fundamental. And I do understand that might be forever.
I add this part here because Dr. Getulio reminded me that I want to live well, that I want to stay in this world treating life as sacred. I add this part here in order to thank all of my dear friends who kept me grounded and whose work I believe is fundamental to the well being of so many in the world. I thank you Getulio Dare Rabello, Francesco Lombardi, Laura Moriyama Silveira, Aquiles Paiva, Ivana Mendes, Camilla Amaral, Sara Al Saraf, Bruno Bueno, Cris Formiga, Cristiano Sanna, Ilda Bondioli
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