Home is Medicine Enough

When I look back over the past four years, I realize that I have not felt as sick as I feel now. "Sick as a dog," is, for some reason, the phrase that keeps coming back to me as a description of my present situation: fever, sore throat, aching joints, throbbing headache--the usual symptoms of flu. I suppose I should be grateful if this is the "sickest" I have been in a while.

What's interesting is the way so many of us here in Rome have been getting sick. In the past weeks, the Provincials of the Netherlands, Ireland, Germany, and Bohemia, among others, have been downed by the flu. (I told the Provincial of Bohemia that I blame him for my present illness: we sit beside each other in the Aula, and for three days last week, I was exposed to his germs!) This week, it's the turn of the Chinese: John Lee Hua, the delegate for China, and myself, have asked to be excused from the General Congregation sessions. Jojo Magadia has developed a bad cold. And yesterday, when I was brought to the infirmary by Joe Quilongquiling, Fr. Kolvenbach was ahead of me in line to see the doctor! Either the things we are discussing are making us sick, or, more scientifically, the recycled, stale air of the Aula is circulating disease among us.

Yesterday, our very kind Ambassador to the Vatican, Tita Nida Vera, sent over Tinola and Tortilla (along with cherries, oranges, Oreos, shortbread, and real Filipino rice) to the curia for my lunch. She had heard from Joe Q. that I have not been eating, so, in her typically motherly way, she sent all these goodies to coax me into eating. And coax me they did. I was very struck though by the way Joe explained to an Italian lady employee of the curia why the ambassador had sent food. "When you are sick, home is medicine enough." It sounded better in Italian, but Joe was absolutely right.