If there is one thing I am grateful for in this exquisite and nourishing journey called life, it is my faithful and close companion, my complex and enigmatic secretary, my brain. Yes, as you read it, he has zealously safeguarded the records of what has been lived and what has been experienced through the senses. With portentous efficiency, he has worked hard and with little rest, generating a distinguished order, keeping the desired evocations at my disposal, preserving with zeal and as far as possible, the greatest ostentation in detail. Nevertheless, he remains suspicious and crafty, for it holds arcane secrets that I have not yet been able to elucidate.

You may be wondering what connection my prelude has with this week's question, I will tell you that it has a lot to do with it. When I read the invitation, it clicked in my memory, the experiential life story with the patient Casimiro, a septuagenarian carrier of Chagas disease in the disabling phase (enlarged and limited heart function), a pathology caused by the parasite Trypanosoma (Schizotrypanum) cruzi. Our time together went beyond the threshold of the doctor-patient relationship to become a life lesson, true wisdom at the bedside, I will tell you the story.

I walk with giant steps through the corridors of the hospital, heading to the emergency area, engrossed in my thoughts, and everyday things that I have to attend to outside the shift, I refocus on space and place, my course is to go to the inter-consultation call to evaluate a patient who is a priority due to his decompensation, it is Casimiro, I read his diagnostic summary, he has not been a patient of our service, it is a first time consultation.

On arriving at the indicated bed, I find a man sitting up, very dyspnoeic, connected to oxygen, his eyes wide open and his expression frankly frantic and anxious, understandably due to the great difficulty in breathing, at the same time his lower limbs are hanging from the bed with last degree edema. This is not the time for questioning, he is in decompensated heart failure. I visualized the treatment sheet, and the indications are correct. It is up to me to generate calm and accompany him in the process, strengthening his confidence, to contributing over time to the effect of the drugs.

The hours passed without my noticing, Casimiro was calmer, his waterlogging had considerably diminished and his breathing had improved. He was very weak, due to the efforts he had made, he came from an area in the countryside, where health services are non-existent, and he had probably been in that condition for days, accentuating his decompensation. I said goodbye and agreed to see him again at a more opportune time. He nodded his head in acceptance.

Three days passed since that meeting. Casimiro was already tolerating the environment and was beginning to ambulate early, so he was taken to our service in a wheelchair for consultation and admission control. Casimiro, 72 years old, was the youngest of 13 siblings (I remember clearly because he emphasized that it was a "bad" number), all of them already deceased, several of them with the same affectation, as well as his mother and father. He came from a rural area endemic to the disease. In his consumption, he exacerbated his caffeine habits and the consumption of chimó (chewing of tobacco extract paste). He lost his wife and two children in an overflowing river, he did not return to form a home, taking refuge in agriculture and especially in the elaboration of perinolas (traditional toy) and papagayos (traditional toy), which he gave to the children of the town.

In an inopportune way, I asked him: Are you living or surviving, Casimiro? He was abstracted with a lost look for a few minutes and said: "... I tell you, Doctor, that I live as what is, as I am, Casimiro, life pulled me to a corner, it beat me, my taita (father) and my mae (mother) got sick of the chipo (insect) bite and died, then the river took everything of mine, my wife, my boys, my house, my crops, then my brothers died falling one by one.... But the earth has made me grateful, my hands make me happy when I make perinolas and papagayos for the jojotos (small) children, it is nice to see them laugh. I am grateful for the years that God has given me".

As Casimiro, widened in his story, his eyes shone like radiant stars, his words flowed in his will, he distilled his prodigious wisdom, endorsed the value of liberation from material attachment, and in his way, he freed himself from suffering, relying on love, shaping his existence with greater transcendence, in the beauty of the simple, in the affection and understanding of others, especially children and how to ingratiate himself with them to give them joy. Despite the rigidities he had gone through, he was always grateful for the years he had lived, giving a fair value to his life. Casimiro chose to live, finding from his inner recognition, what for him was happiness. His vital wisdom brought new perspectives to the journey, highlighted the importance of letting go and letting go of the insignificant and scrutinizing the gem of the inner self, which guides and expresses itself.