TWO WEEKS OF SILENCE AND AN EYE SAVED BY PERTILE GRACE TO THE SACRED HEART OF NEGRAR, WHILE I MEDITATED AS THEOLOGIST: WHAT CAN CAUSE THE LACK OF HUMILITY IN THE MEN OF SCIENCE?

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For this I thank God as a man of faith, priest and theologian: making me experience directly on my skin how high the virtue of Christian humility truly is. I understood this while I was memorizing the Roman Missal in Italian and Latin, scared that, even if a similar pathology had arisen in the healthy eye, the two beloved cats of Jorge Facio Lince and mine, Hypatia and Bruno, who live in the house with us, they should have learned to live with a German shepherd, who would wear a headband with a red cross, carrying me around the street with a white cane.

Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo

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Father Ariel S.. Levi di Gualdo at the entrance to the Sacred Heart Hospital of Negrar in front of the mosaic depicting San Giovanni Calabria, founder of the work

This article I could have owned it: Reflections on my skin. Basically the best, because it is one thing to contemplate with surreal fideism a beautiful ivory crucifix that makes art and useless emotional tenderness, an account to end up participating, even to a small extent, to the crucifixion of Christ, the only way to live the true faith, which is not emotional sentimentality, it would be enough to understand the words of the Divine Master who teaches: "If anyone wants to come after me, disown yourself, take up his cross every day and follow me " (LC 9, 23).

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In the last two years I was active on all fronts: I have written many articles on The Island of Patmos, published new books (cf.. WHO), video-conferencing product, teacher's lessons (cf.. WHO), participated in television programs on the Mediaset networks. Last in series order White area the 19 May led by Giuseppe Brindisi (see WHO by the minute 01:35 following), where I will be a guest again on 9 June. but yet, behind all this hyper activity, there was something serious, to the point of inducing me to think that I had to produce as much as possible, because maybe one day I would no longer be able to do certain jobs. I even memorized the entire Roman Missal in two languages, Italian and Latin, in case one day I wasn't able to read anymore ...

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What happened? This: in July of 2019 an injury to the retina of my right eye appears. It would have been necessary to intervene with an immediate "cerclage", but believing they were doing me good they practiced a mending with laser. After a month there is a total detachment of the retina and the eye remains completely blind. The retina is then surgically reattached, after the recommended and chosen surgeon informed me: «On a risk scale from zero to ten, she is at risk eleven ".

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the surgeon and retinal researcher Grazia Pertile, director of the ophthalmology department of the Sacred Heart Hospital in Negrar, San Giovanni Calabria Foundation

The intervention is successful, even if performed - which I will discover a year later - with an outdated technique, but not for this ineffective. Even today I am grateful to the surgeon who glued my retina back on. Of course, despite having done it privately using my health insurance policy, I was operated on a kind of "chair" with local anesthesia practiced through a puncture in the eye that I do not wish even for a smuggler who transports human beings from Africa to the Italian coasts with serious risk to the lives of women and children. So I thought it worked, to the point that I didn't bother to ask: … But in this splendid five-star hotel-style private clinic, you don't even have a shred of anesthetist? Money, you spend them all in the interior furnishings to throw smoke in the eyes of the Ladies and Gentlemen of the beautiful society who come to get the cosmetic surgery touch-ups?

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The fact is illustrated in broad lines, it is useless to detail the clinical procedure, because I intend to talk about something else. I only specify that everything was aggravated by a haemorrhage in the eye that occurred due to natural causes during the operating session, which caused the damage to the photoreceptors, ie the cells of the retina that allow focusing. With the right eye, with which I saw only crooked shadows, I couldn't read and write. All made worse by an "extensive membrane" that formed a few months later on the retina.

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The surgeon who operated on me and reattached the retina, undoubtedly saving my eye from total blindness, he took care not to expose my state, which for nearly two years I ignored, after being liquidated with a verdict on which I had made a good reason: "More than this the eye will not be able to recover".

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the surgeon and retinal researcher Grazia Pertile, director of the ophthalmology department of the Sacred Heart Hospital in Negrar, San Giovanni Calabria Foundation

A very dear friend, one of several Roman clinicians with whom they are in close friendship, man of great science and experience, he himself accompanied me to an authentic international authority in the field of retinal surgery. After a series of in-depth examinations, the eminent clinician examined my eye with the manual lens for about half an hour and calmly and mercilessly gave me the whole story: from the mending laser to be avoided until the intervention is carried out well, the haemorrhage that had been silenced and so on. Concluded the great expert in retinal surgery: "Personally, in this already very treated eye, I would not put my hand to it, because the less you touch the better, But …".

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Needless to say: an eminent scholar of the retina and a great leader, he could tell me in front of a couple of his student surgeons that someone else might be able to do what they would not have dared to do out of understandable prudence? That simple "but ..." was enough to let me indirectly understand what cannot always be said directly. However, I am also a student of a long-time diplomat in the service of the Holy See, who in the field of diplomacy has educated me properly in long years of filial relationship.

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Time ago my dentist's husband had spoken to me in tones of wonder about Doctor Grazia Pertile, director of the ophthalmology department of the Sacred Heart Hospital in Negrar, San Giovanni Calabria Foundation, in the province of Verona (cf.. WHO). This distinguished specialist and well-known researcher of European fame, had saved his eye later 7 surgery performed in a disastrous way by renowned surgeons, or at least of fame on the cards… political. And the damage that was caused to him was such that from evening to morning he operated on it urgently, while the eye was now about to go into necrosis. My decision, jump in the car and in June of 2020 I go to Negrar where I pay a visit with Doctor Mauro Sartore, who reveals himself to me as an angel of God and who after all the necessary tests tells me that the damage to the photoreceptors is currently irreversible, but by removing the extensive retinal membrane and correcting the previous surgery, vision can significantly improve. In October, I am visited by Doctor Grazia Pertile who reaffirms the diagnosis of her collaborator and offers me the intervention, also because otherwise, the eye, it would have been doomed to total blindness within a few years or more.

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Mauro Sartore, retinal surgeon of the staff of Grazia Pertile, ophthalmology department of the Sacred Heart Hospital of Negrar, San Giovanni Calabria Foundation

The 24 May I made the pre-admission, the 25 I was operated on and the 26 resigned. I then went to Lake Maggiore with my friends de The Island of Patmos Enrico and Liliana, who gave me days of splendid convalescence in their villa. I write this article today, in my hotel room in Valpolicella, after having carried out the post-operative check-up this morning with Doctor Mauro Sartore.

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When I walked into the operating room to Negrar, before my eyes one appeared team fully composed of several people, with all due respect to the no-roast smoke of a private clinic that in the outer frame looked like a five-star hotel, where, however, they shot me a puncture in the eye to give me a local anesthesia. A completely different story at the Sacred Heart of Negrar, where lying on the cot, not on some kind of armchair, no one approached me wild pointer, but the anesthetist who gave me total anesthesia, during which I was also intubated. I remember falling asleep while acting: I thank God Almighty and you, brothers, because I have sinned exceedingly in thought, verb, works, and omissions … (I confess to almighty God and to you brothers, that I have sinned much in thoughts, words, works and omissions ...) and that I woke up saying "Jesus Christ be praised» (Praised be Jesus Christ). And a few days later I fully understood how much I had to praise Jesus Christ.

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A few days after surgery, with the eye still clouded, I already see all the perfectly straight lines and outlines. I distinguish and read the characters of the large letters, those of the billboards, signs and book covers, that before I did not see or read.

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The Doctor Grazia Pertile she is a very reserved woman, pronounces a few words. His is a job that is not done with words, useful and indispensable for other kinds of scientific practices. It's a job, his, of pure action, an authentic operating room monster with a more unique than rare dexterity. It is I who have always been in close contact with the most delicate spheres of the human being, I immediately understood the kind of blue-eyed angel I was in front of. So I just played on his name, pulling out of theAve Maria only two but incisive words: «Full of Grace» (full of grace). Yup, I greet you Woman full of grace, able to truly put to good use the extraordinary grace that God has placed in your hands.

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Entrance to the Sacred Heart Hospital of Negrar with the statue of San Giovanni Calabria

Lours Patmos Island hasn't published any articles in the last few weeks because it coincides with me, our Capuchin editor Father Ivano Liguori also had health problems that led to fifteen days of hospitalization. A month and a half ago he suffered from right migraine pain with ipsilateral tingling paresthesias and ptosis in the right eye, who required hospitalization in neurology for thorough investigations, having been a patient with two autoimmune diseases for about four years, one to the kidneys (an interstitial nephritis) and one to the liver (a primary biliary cholangitis). Like this, Father Ivano and me, from one end of Italy to the other we have been absorbed by health events. Meanwhile, Father Ivano continued neurological tests for days to keep ptosis in his right eye under control, improved but not fully resolved yet, I was about to carry out surgery on the retina of my right eye, occurred through a hospitalization of only two and a half days, which, however, involved preparation and convalescence. This has been our situation for the past few weeks, we make it public today to clarify our silence, adding to the whole a very positive fact: in the month of May dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, eighty million visits to our magazine were exceeded during the last four years of publishing and publishing activity. Even more so, do not think that the Devil had to somehow put a hand in it?

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Telling this story of mine it almost involved a violence exerted on myself. Each of us has the right to their own privacy. However, this story of mine is the paradigm of a very ancient human drama that we all have to deal with ever since Adam and Eve committed original sin., which I remember was a sin of pride, so serious as to alter the perfect balance of the world created by God, but above all of man himself, made in the image and likeness of the Divine Creator, who previously did not know about physical decay, the illness, pain, old age and death, all consequences of that great sin of rebellion, of that pride of which the lack of humility has always been the favorite daughter.

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research on the artificial retina conducted by Grazia Pertile

From bricklayer to designer, from the plumber to the carpenter, from the manager at the chef and go on to follow, when man is faced with something he is unable to do, often begins by saying: "It is not possible, It can not be done". I do not say almost always or of practice, but often those who respond in this way know very well that certain things are possible to do. But for no reason would he admit that others are capable of doing what he is unable to do. Of course, however serious they may be, the damages or incapacities of certain craftsmen and technicians are almost always limited. However, when attitudes of similar pride generating blind lack of humility are put in place by an oncologist or a surgeon, what can happen? Our Capuchin editor Father Ivano Liguori, specialist in health pastoral care, who for years served as a chaplain in a large hospital, our young Dominican editor Father Gabriele Giordano M. Scardocci, great scholar on the theological and ecclesiological level of the problem of disabilities, how many cases that resulted in the disaster have they known? I'll take it too, who as a priest have always been close to and dedicated to assisting the terminally ill and disabled, reiterating at every turn that we priests who have tried their hand at research studies and high theological speculations must have more to do with human material than ever, except to otherwise generate monsters of inhumanity that live in the hyperuranium of ecclesiastical universities, drowned in the world of the unreal and in the spasmodic search for career successes and self-affirmation.

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When we talk about the virtue of Christian humility, we priests and theologians certainly do not mean the beguine or the wrong-necked dream Catholic who pretends not to feel worthy or up to par. Humility is quite another: it is the virtue of the great. Only adults can confront their human limitations every day, thus fleeing the most harmful forms of inhumanity, those who carry their egocentrism or their hypertrophic narcissism above the very value of human life. Here then is the heart surgeon who, despite knowing perfectly the existence of a particularly good colleague who has specialized for years in that specific heart malformation, prefers to say "you can't do anything else ... you can't do more than this ... get over it ...", not to say that the patient could be saved by other hands. The same is true for certain oncologists, or for certain retinal surgery specialists and so on.

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the ophthalmology staff of Grazia Pertile, Sacred Heart Hospital of Negrar

And we want to talk of clinical barons which usually surround themselves with half notches, having to shine with its own light? Or forget as many half notches placed as assistants to distinguished clinicians at the suggestion of companies and banks that finance foundations and research institutes? What happens next, to the sick attracted by the mirage of the great luminary, when they go to his ward where they end up being operated on by some of his mediocre assistants? The world of the clinic is quite different, of the surgery and research of Doctor Grazia Pertile, who does not fear shadows on the star that she is but who has formed a staff of surgeons who are all very good. Another world, in the midst of so many clinical things from the other world that often take you away from the life of this earthly world decades in advance.

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For this I thank God as a man of faith, priest and theologian: making me experience directly on my skin how high the virtue of Christian humility truly is. I understood this while I was memorizing the Roman Missal in Italian and Latin, scared that, even if a similar pathology had arisen in the healthy eye, the two beloved cats of Jorge Facio Lince and mine, Hypatia and Bruno, who live in the house with us, they should have learned to live with a German shepherd, who would wear a headband with a red cross, carrying me around the street with a white cane.

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On my path, between so much scientific and omissive arrogance and pride, but I have known mine Ave Maria, the Woman full of grace, the Doctor and researcher on retinal surgery Grazia Pertile. And I fully understood the theological and salvific value of Christian humility, the one that makes you great and that saves your soul from eternal damnation.

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from Negrar in Valpolicella, 3 June 2021

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THANKS PERTILE EXPLAINS THE AVANT-GARDE TREATMENTS FOR RETINA PATHOLOGIES

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