St. Dymphna

1 Comment May 7, 2022 Larry Peterson

St. Dymphna en.wikipedia.org

By Larry Peterson

Loretta and I were living in northern New Jersey and had two sons; Larry Jr was six, and Billy was two. We were hoping to have a girl, but Loretta had been told that she would never have any more children. We were disappointed but okay with the report. We had, after all, been blessed with two healthy sons.

My mother-in-law had been visiting St. Benedict’s Abbey in Massachusetts. On the way home, she had planned to stop at our house and stay a few days. When she arrived, and while still walking into the house, she said, “Wait until you see what I have.”

She reaches into her oversized purse and pulls out a beautiful gold container. “What is it?” I ask.

“Look inside the glass. It is a first-class relic of St. Dymphna. She is the patron saint of mental and emotional disorders. I asked the priest at St. Benedict if I could borrow this for Marion and Kelly (Marion was her granddaughter). I’m going to bring it to the hospital, touch it to both of them, and ask St. Dymphna to help them get better. They actually let me borrow it.”

Kelly was 16, and Marion was 14. Both suffered from Anorexia Nervosa. Kelly was down to about 45 pounds, and Marion, two years younger, was hovering around 65 pounds. My mother-in-law wanted desperately to help these girls who were slowly killing themselves.

My brother-in-law, Howard, came by later that afternoon, and he took his mom to visit the two girls. She held the relic next to each girl’s chest and prayed to St. Dymphna to intercede with God to help them get well. Time would tell how God would respond.

Doctors thought that Kelly would not survive, but both girls did miraculously recover. But the real surprise for me came about six weeks later. Loretta and I had the babysitter come over, and we headed to Luigi’s Italian restaurant. As we ate our lasagna, she said to me, “Oh, by the way, I’m pregnant.”

Holding a fork with lasagna stuck to it in front of my mouth, I stared at her. A moment or two passed, and as tears ran down her face, she said, “I used the relic.”

Unknown to me, she had taken the St. Dymphna relic and, holding it to her womb, prayed to the teenage saint. She asked her if she could help her with pregnancy issues. Seven and a half months later, our daughter was born. We named her Mary Dymphna.

The next day I was visiting Loretta, and, as she lay in her bed holding Mary Dymphna, an elderly lady poked her head into the room. She was delivering newspapers and nervously said, “I never speak to patients, but for some unknown reason, I felt I had to talk to you. Could you please tell me your baby’s name?”

We both looked at each other, and Loretta said, “Sure, its Mary Dymphna.”

So help me, this old lady started crying and said, “I knew it, I knew it. St. Dymphna saved my life a long time ago. I knew this baby had something to do with her.”

The lady came over, touched Mary’s face, and looked at her. She was seeing something we could not. It was an inexplicable spiritual moment that was born of faith. So, who was St. Dymphna, the teenage saint from 7^th century Ireland who personally stepped into our lives so many years ago?

Dymphna was the daughter of a pagan king by the name of Damon. Her mom was Christian. When Dymphna was fourteen, she took a vow of chastity and dedicated her life to Jesus. Shortly after that, her mom passed away, and her father became very distraught. Under pressure to remarry, Damon insisted that any new wife would have to resemble his first wife. His aides searched far and wide but could find no one who resembled the dead queen, no one except the king’s daughter, Dymphna.

Damon, losing all sensibilities, demanded that Dymphna marry him. Horrified at such a demand, Dymphna and her confessor, Father Gerebernus, fled Ireland and landed in Belgium. After a while, King Damon tracked them down. He had Father Gerebernus killed and demanded that Dymphna return with him to Ireland. She refused. Her own father drew his sword and cut off her head. She was 15 years old.

When they discovered the remains of St. Dymphna, miracles began happening immediately. People with varied cases of mental illness were cured. In honor of the teenage saint, a church was built in Gheel, Belgium. To this very day, people in Gheel will always accept the mentally ill into their homes without question. Sociologists still study the success of this phenomenon.

The connection between me, my family, and St. Dymphna is a beautiful thing. So I will end with the following. The teenage saint is known as the “Lily of Eire” because of her virtue. My mom’s name was Lily. My daughter, Mary Dymphna, was baptized at St. Mary’s Church in Dumont, N.J. The US National Shrine of St. Dymphna is located at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Massilon, Ohio.

St. Dymphna is the patron saint of those suffering from; mental disorders, incest victims, victims of sexual assault, depression, sleep disorders, and of runaways.

St. Dymphna, please pray for us all (Feast Day is May 15)

Leave a comment October 21, 2020 Larry Peterson

By Larry Peterson

I was married to a woman who had Alzheimer’s Disease. Her diagnosis was determined not merely by her behavior, but by careful medical diagnosis. Today, there are those who occupy a public forum and use it to disseminate medical analysis based on their own dislikes and prejudices held against those they do not like. They influence many viewers and listeners who may believe their “expertise” and begin doing their evaluations on whom these pundits reference. Publicly accusing folks of having Alzheimer’s Disease based on personal observation is disgusting. They all need an injection of “humility.” (I wish the CDC could come up with that).

Husband and Wife(s)

I have been widowed twice. My first wife, Loretta, passed away seventeen years ago after being attacked by Stage 4 Melanoma. We had met in grade school, connected in high school, and were married 35 years. Yes—we were together until death parted us. Being a man of faith, I am sure I will see her again.

I met Marty at church a few years later. I was president of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, and she was interested in joining. Her husband had died four years earlier, and we had something in common. In need of a secretary, she volunteered. We were in frequent contact because of our positions, and about six months later, we went out to dinner. Two years later, we were married. It was something I had never considered. I believe God helped us meet.

Loretta suffered from Lupus, Chronic Pancreatitis, Type 1 Diabetes, and Liver disease. The Melanoma came last. I had become her caregiver and even learned how to administer her IVs and give her injections. I became pretty good at it. However, she never fell victim to the demon known as Alzheimer’s Disease. That was a world that I had only heard of but never experienced “up close and personal.” I may have been a caregiver to Loretta, but I was not expecting what lay ahead, nor was I prepared for it.

“Newlyweds” and Cancer

You never know what life might throw your way, and we hit our first real “bump in the road” during the winter of 2007 when I was diagnosed with Prostate cancer. However, it proved to be less of a challenge than what we had anticipated. In May, I had a radical prostatectomy. I was blessed because they told me my Gleason Score was an “8” and I would have been dead in two years if I had not taken care of it. My recovery took several months but it has been thirteen years since the surgery, and I am still cancer free. Praise the Lord; I can still talk about it.

But it was not long before a different situation unexpectedly reared its ugly head. It all began when Marty walked up to me, raised her right arm, and ponted to her armpit. She asked me, “Feel this lump. It keeps getting bigger. What do you think it is?”

Marty had never been sick a day in her life. She had noticed the “lump” but had never said anything, expecting it to go away. But it did not go away. Instead, it got bigger; so did the one in her groin. I convinced her to to see our primary care doctor who, upon examining the “lumps”, referred us to a surgeon. The “lumps” were surgically removed, biopsied, and the diagnosis was; Large Grade B-Cell Lymphoma. Chemotherapy was to be her next challenge. Amazingly, she was not concerned at all. She told me, “This is nothing. I’ll be fine.”

After the diagnosis, we again met with a surgeon. This time it was to discuss having a mediport implanted in her chest. A mediport is an access point for IV treatments. It replaces the need to always access an IV line by using a person’s veins. The patient can avoid all that by having their port accessed with a Huber needle, designed especially for that purpose. After the infusion is complete, the Huber needle is removed, and a band-aid is placed over the site where the needle was inserted. The patient never has to be stuck and, in my opinion, it is a wonderful thing. Marty had the surgery in January of 2011 She began chemotherapy treatments in March of that year.

Time for Chemo

Marty’s cancer was found in her lungs, her liver, spleen, and various other places. A year and a half later the cancer was 50% less than originally seen by the PET Scan. (The full name for PET Scan is Positron Emission Tomography. It is an imaging test that can show how your tissues and organs are functioning. A radioactive dye called a tracer is used to show the activity).By 2014 her cancer seemed to be in remission. During this time I did notice a change in Marty’s cognitive state. She seemed to be forgetting things, not much but enough that raise some red flags. For example, she was redundant, constantly asking the same question over and over; “are we having dinner tonight?” “are we having dinner tonight?”

The one that always tore me up was when she would look at me with a frightened look and ask, “Are you going away now?’….Are you going away now?” While she was in the hospital, it was always her fear that I would not come back. It was awful to see her fear-filled face. I simply began taking her with me when I had to go out for something.

She had always baked “made from scratch” chocolate chip cookies, and truthfully, they were fabulous. So one day, I am watching as she goes about the kitchen getting out the necessary ingredients to make some. Acting as normal as can be, she takes out flour, eggs, sugar, brown sugar, butter, and other things (I do not know all the ingredients she used to make these cookies) and places them on the counter. She has done this same thing hundreds of times.

I continued to watch from the TV room, and it was as if everything was perfectly normal. I can remember thinking that maybe she was OK and that they had made a terrible mistake. Then she stopped and stood there looking at all the ingredients and the big stainless steel mixing bowl in front of her. She kept looking, and then she began to cry. I got up and slowly walked over to her. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

She was sobbing now, and I did not understand. Then she blurted out, “What is all of this stuff doing here? What is it doing here? Am I supposed to do something with it?”

I hugged her, and I told her that I would put the stuff away. She smiled, I kissed her on her cheek, and then she went in and sat down on the sofa. I was not sure if she remembered what she was even doing a few minutes earlier. That moment in time was a reality check for me. Unexpectedly, Marty’s cancer went into remission as the Alzheimer’s exacerbated.

Alzheimer’s and Dementia; the difference

It is important to remember that Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia are two different things. Alzheimer’s is a form of Dementia, while Dementia is a syndrome or a symptom of a cognitive disorder. There are many other causes of dementia besides Alzheimer’s Disease such as Vascular Dementia, Huntington’s Disease, Dementia with Lewy Bodies, and Parkinson’s Disease Dementia, to name a few.

A football player may develop dementia from years of head trauma received while participating in his sport. A retired fighter may be deemed as being “punch drunk” because dementia has taken hold of his brain after thousands of punches to the head. A diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease requires a special evaluation by doctors and trained psychologists in the field before the Alzheimer’s label is officially given to the patient.

My wife first exhibited “forgetfulness’ during her chemo treatments in 2011. I had heard of “chemo-brain” and asked her oncologist about her chemo treatments being the cause. He could not answer and said we would have to wait and see. It was not until the summer of 2014 when medical professionals gave an official diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease. That was after an MRI, evaluation by a neurologist, and having her and the family interviewed by two psychologists who specialized in the field.

She lived three years after diagnosis. Some Alzheimer’s patients live up to fifteen years, especially those diagnosed in their early fifties. The course of the illness is unpredictable, but the results are very predictable. Alzheimer’s Disease cannot be slowed or stopped. It just keeps at it until its mission is accomplished. Here are a few facts:

Today, 5 million people are living with Alzheimer’s Disease
It is the 6^th leading cause of death in the USA
One in three seniors dies from Alzheimer’s or another form of Dementia

Lastly, from a man who has lived with Alzheimer’s and watched it erase his wife’s memory and kill her:

I wish to say to all those uneducated “experts” who proudly use their “bully pulpit” to place labels of Alzheimer’s disease and other Dementias upon those they do NOT like; you are making a mockery of the profession you are practicing. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

And please, never forget to ask the Patroness of those with dementia and mental illness for her intercession. Her name is St. Dymphna Click on her name and say “HI.”