Catholic Hermit: Lenten Illness

A contemporary aspect that helps a Catholic hermit consider all the more the early Christian hermits, is that of illness.  In living in a more solitary environment, remaining "hidden from the eyes of men," not being a hermit connected with a religious order...the issue of illness can become a challenge.

The early desert fathers and mothers were not part of a religious order--at least back in the first few centuries.  Prior, the prophets who essentially were eremites, lived alone or at most with an understudy.

Thus, in more recent centuries, hermits who did not associate with a religious order or a lara (hermit grouping in separate dwellings but in a type of hermit "community"), those Catholic hermits who live in solitude with few close-by person contacts have a challenge when it comes to being ill.

I was recently exposed to flu B, but I also have been dealing with sinus troubles.  Sinus infections and flu have similar symptoms.  In past years when I'd become ill, it was very difficult to get antibiotics needed sooner than later.  Since I do live in solitude and have but now the one contact, a couple from a parish who bring me Communion once a week when they are not otherwise engaged), I need to get to a doctor before I become too ill to be mobile.

So it was, that on Monday when at a doctor appt., I mentioned a sore throat and sinus issues flaring, and should I have an anti-biotic.  The doctor wanted to wait.  Sure enough, by the following evening, I was down and out with what seems a nasty sinus problem.  No over-the-counter efforts of remedies in the hermitage helped stop the onward movement of illness.

But after last year's five-weeks' of awful illness that ended up with lung troubles--pneumonia of some type and two rounds of antibiotics, and much, much suffering.  Yes, it was during Lent.

After that horrible ordeal with being misdiagnosed by medical practitioners, dragging out the healing process, a friend from afar sent Doxycycline to keep on hand.  With my increased back pain, my physician who is available but two days a month only, prescribed some anti-nausea medication due to the low back pain radiating to stomach, causing near-constant nausea of varying degrees.

So I took the Doxycycline and the anti-nausea medication night before last and yesterday morning, and the nausea is so strong that it is all I can do to not vomit.  And when weak and dizzy from sickness, not easy to even get up to bathroom.  But, the sore throat is waning some, and the head pain lessened: progress!

I had called the doctor group although my physician not there for a couple more weeks, and explained the situation that I'd just been there, but really need a Z-pack due to nausea from Doxycycline.  Was told they would put the message through and just call it in, as I was too ill to drive myself to the office, but thought I could ask the couple to pick up a prescription and drop it off by my door.  I do not want to risk others getting ill just in case I'm contagious.  

Waited all day, and called a couple times.  The message was given to a doctor who I knew would not cooperate, nor would I trust for a proper diagnosis even if I were well enough to get to office.  But I held out hope for they were encouraging that the prescription would be called in.  Z-packs do not cause such nausea....  

Finally got a call this afternoon.  Nurse wanted to know more but said the doctor wanted me to come in, even though I'd just been there although with different doctor.  Explained the situation yet again.  She was going to pass message on to a different doctor but thought I'd unlikely get a prescription called in.  My only recourse is to take the anti-nausea med and the Doxycycline, and to pray my way through the horrible nausea and pray to keep the medication down.

I have thought how amazing it is, though, that God provided through the friend from afar who sent the Doxycycline they had left from her husband's inability to take it, even with anti-nausea medication.  I may be joining him, but thus far this is my only option or else face out of control infection that in prior years then gets to the lungs and into pneumonia.

And while I had not recently been to civilization for needed food provisions, there are some edibles for me in the pantry and freezer, even if not able to cook a meal, and the food supplies are low, I must rely solely on the Lord.  When medication nauseates, one is not interested in eating, anyway!  In that sense, God removes the potential problem of not enough food on hand.  

Not at all easy when a consecrated hermit who lives within the silence of solitude.  It is just the circumstance that the Lord has chosen my vocation as a hermit to be, at least for now, more severe in the solitude.  Just as when my eye had the splinter, I have considered how the traditional hermits of yore lived in faith in God when ailments beset them. 

It is the living out of God alone, of trusting in God's providence, and in having full acceptance of the unknown of how long one will be ill or if one will survive or not (in severe illnesses of which one is never quite sure how bad is bad).  Other than a brief period today in which the reality of all the work I have yet to do to finish this hermitage in order to sell it (nearly out of money lent me by family member to do so) tempted me to frustration, I am laughing a bit--and marveling--about how this ailment was in full force on Ash Wednesday--yesterday.

Each year for many years, there has been some surprise awaiting during Lent.  I'd just had a letter from my spiritual father, telling me to not be concerned about anything for Lent as my pain and the hard work I was doing was plenty of penance and sacrifice!  But, the Lord surprises us with whatever He knows in His omniscience, as to what we need during Lent to help us develop whatever virtues we need to improve in and to whittle away whatever vices yet plague us.

It is Lent.  And if I can see all the glory of God in all that has transpired, including not being able to have a non-sickening antibiotic but have a free antibiotic even if it makes me suffer in the taking of it--it all works out!  If by some chance this is the flu, it will pass in time, or if it worsens (for an antibiotic will not heal the flu), then I will know in a worsening of symptoms, and accept whatever God wills in surviving or passing.

I have some Scriptures and other aspects of the hermit journey in mind to write, prior to this health challenge, but they will wait as I must wait.  Not well enough to work harder at writing than this simple description of how illness affects a consecrated Catholic hermit who is living in a solitary mode, and the way in which one must rely upon the Lord in the silence of solitude.

And, there is never a lack of prayer content.  I have my little window to the world, as I lay here on the floor on top of the flattened out sleeping bag.  Laptop is on top of a dish rack so I can write in prone position; my back has long been too painful to sit to do much of anything, and with this illness cannot be up for more than a handful of minutes.

The horrific school shooting has been foremost in the prayers.  Yet the other prayer concerns that are given me through email or text message, or a phone call or two--including the doctors denying the Zpack to be called in--fill my days and nights with a major work of a hermit:  Prayer.  And always with prayer, we are to Praise the Lord God Almighty!