Fernanda, sharing her perspective of her husband’s long, drawn-out illness, explained that Marcilio had been sick for two years and had seen countless doctors, but with no diagnosis.
“It was a wait full of anguish, because he was very sick for two years and we didn’t know what was wrong,” she said, explaining that the first attempt for treatment “was unsuccessful. So the doctor changed therapy, but Marcilio continued to deteriorate.”
She recalled how it wasn’t until Marcilio was hospitalized in October 2008 that they finally received their answer.
After running a series of tests “the doctor looked at the exam and, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, understood that Marcilio had eight brain abscesses,” she said.
“We always prayed to Mother Teresa,” she said, noting that her parish priest had given her a relic of Mother Teresa before the couple got married.
“I put the relic on Marcilio’s head, where he had the abscesses. I recited the prayer of beatification and also what came from my heart,” she said, noting that “it wasn’t easy, but this period enriched me a lot, it enriched our love, our faith … today I can say it was worth it.”
Marcilio, speaking of the moment he was healed, said he woke up Dec. 9, 2008, just a few months after he was diagnosed, with an “unbearable” headache that left him unable to speak, and asked his wife to pray for him.
“From that moment many doctors came to visit me and found that my situation was very serious,” he said, explaining that he was eventually taken to the hospital and prepped for surgery.
However, Marcilio said he never made it in. Instead, he awoke inside the operating room with “a great peace inside me and I no longer had the headache. I didn’t understand what was happening to me.”
The doctors, he said, told him that since he was feeling better they were going to move him to intensive care and put off the surgery until the next day.
Marcilio said he slept through the night without any problems, and that when he met with the doctor the next day, was told to return to his room if the headache still hadn’t come back.
Upon returning to the room, “I learned that the abscesses were greatly reduced, just as the hydrocephalus,” Marcilio said, referring to the medical term for the abnormal build-up of fluid in the skull, causing the brain to swell.
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“The abscesses were reduced by 70% and the hydrocephalus had disappeared,” he said, explaining that after another three days of testing “not even the scars of the abscesses were visible.”
“At that time I discovered that I was cured,” he said, noting that he was able to return home for Christmas.
Fernanda, recounting her experience of the event, said that when she returned to the hospital with Marcilio’s parents the day after he was admitted, the doctors told her he was stable and had returned to his room, instead of going into surgery.
“(The doctor) didn’t tell me that he was cured but I already knew it strongly from what I had prayed to God through the intercession of Mother Teresa,” she said, adding that when she went to Marcilio’s room and saw him sitting up and speaking, “I understood that Mother Teresa had healed him.”
She said Marcilio was “very surprised” by what happened and attributed the fact that he was feeling better to one of the antibiotics he took after being admitted.
But the doctor, Fernanda recalled, told them that “No antibiotic exists that takes effect immediately, the day after … someone up there loves you a lot.”