From novena to novena

Thinking about several sick relatives and friends, I decided to begin a series of novenas asking for their health. The first novena was for the mother of a friend of mine.

Using the prayer card of Don Alvaro, I have received some favours like finding some items I had lost or for assistance in small tasks around the house.

A little over a month ago a friend of mine had some insurance problems related to damage caused to his house by some neighbours. And we did a novena with the prayer card, asking Blessed Alvaro for his intercession. The problem was resolved.

Thinking about several sick relatives and friends, I decided to begin a series of novenas asking for their health. Around the middle of last July I began, together with a friend, the first of those novenas, since my friend's mother had begun to have serious health problems, as follows.

THEY FOUND A SERIOUS PROBLEM: HER KIDNEYS WERE NOT FUNCTIONING WELL, OR RATHER, THEY WERE HARDLY FUNCTIONING AT ALL

A few weeks earlier she felt very ill, and my friend had to take her to the emergency department of the hospital. They found a serious problem: her kidneys were not functioning well, or rather, they were hardly functioning at all. Dialysis was necessary. In the last tests before the treatment, they discovered that she was also suffering from myeloma, a cancer that arises in a type of white blood cells.

To start the most suitable treatment for this illness, her kidneys had first to be treated. The doctors advised us that recovery from the kidney problem was going to be difficult. Dialysis would help recovery, but not very much. This could also impede the treatment of the myeloma.

In this situation, I suggested to my friend that we pray a novena with the prayer card, and he accepted. We continued in contact by phone, since he had moved to a different city, to be with his mother.

THE DOCTOR TOLD THEM THAT HE DID NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT HAD HAPPENED AND THAT IT SEEMED MIRACULOUS.

Once, when I asked him how things were going with his mother and he said that he would tell me everything when we next saw each other. We agreed to meet in a few days. When we met he told me what had happened. On one of the days of the dialysis treatment, during the session the catheter placed in one of her legs failed. They tried to repair it but couldn’t. They were going to put one in another part of her body, but they decided to do some tests beforehand. On doing those tests they discovered that the kidneys were working and so there was no need to continue with the dialysis. Consequently, they could go on with the treatment of the myeloma. The doctor told them that he did not understand what had happened and that it seemed miraculous.

Calculating the dates, we came to the conclusion that the failure of the catheter, which served to verify that the kidneys had been cured, coincided with the end of our novena to Don Alvaro.

A.J.

Picture: Josue Verdejo - Pexels