Abandoned to Illness
Months passed by. For a while, Petrică’s condition seemed to have improved. Then everything started to fall apart. On Thursday, April 25th 2013, around midday his soul was called to Heaven, God seemingly willing to help him escape the terrible ordeal of his illness. I recall father Arsenie Boca (the Saint of Ardeal)’s words: „Cancer – Ca-n Cer” (approx. „As in Heaven”)…His warm smile, now from Heaven, will always smile upon us. Rest in peace, sweet soul !
In this hour of grief, evidently, people’s revolt is directed towards various directions…How many times have we found ourselves, when somebody close to our hearts lost his life, with tight fists and looking up to Heaven with tears in our eyes looking for an answer to life’s unjust and hard lessons ?
Petrică’s death is the death of everybody in Romania by a medical system in collapse. Let us not forget that, above all things, Petrică was a firefighter. He saved the lives of his fellow citizens. A person who had sworn his life to this job. A job that does not let one compomise once one has taken an oath to protect the life of others with one’s own life.
Petrică was a firefighter killed by his illness and with the misfortune of being born in a country where rescuers are neither valued or protected.
Unfortunately, in this country are still firefighters who fight with thier own terrible diseases. There are firefighters who, broken by their illness, take the final hit from the state for which they bravely fought and which does not help them. Moreover, it abandons them, merely giving them the rights by the law, the salary for the sick leave.
Plain and simple, there are is not enough money for the firefighters’ medical insurances and their risks. Their only chance lies at the mercy of their comrades and the people who cherish them.
We always boast with the expertise exchanges with the western countries, but nobody thought about organizing a symposium where people could learn about how the firefighters are helped by their countries. How do the civilized countries manage to value and help their rescuers ? Evidently, sometimes, all the money in the world cannot help one get better, but the state can at least make the firefighter who served it feel that he is not abandoned.
How many of them need to die so that the right persons should come up with a right insurance for these people ? How many of them need to pass away so that Romania should not be a country where firefighters are asked for everything but given nothing in return ? How many of them need to pass away so that the state should not abandon them to their illness and offer them instead a minimum of help ?
