That's all right?
I had a bad night due to an allergic outbreak.
Does it happen to you often?
I live in pain.
I moan.
I carry a pump: it doses me with painkillers.
long time ago
Since always. Every day I do five hours of physiotherapy at home.
What is your illness?
Infantile cerebral palsy.
Due...
I was born at five and a half months of gestation. It weighed 900 grams. Lack of perinatal oxygen: paralyzed brain areas.
With what affectation?
"The girl will be a vegetable", said the doctor.
beast
My parents lovingly avoided it. They fought for my health and education. Education has saved my life, excellent.
And medical science…
I've been through a thousand operating rooms and operations... What is the happiest day of your life?
My? Um...
I do know, I know, mine.
Who?
The day I put on shoes by myself.
And this?
I was 16 years old. Thanks to a difficult surgery - I was able to move my feet and put on shoes!
I see crutches and a wheelchair...
I alternate them. My disability is spasticity. It limits me... and it stimulates me.
Spasticity?
My muscles don't obey me, they have spasms... due to cerebral palsy. I was disciplined and tenacious in my exercises.
Have you cultivated this tenacity in everything?
To study. I was lucky: there was a school in Madrid whose founder had a nephew with cerebral palsy. They accepted me there: there were two of us.
Is it important not to segregate the child with cerebral palsy from other children?
very important We live in society. So we all have to learn to live with everyone... from a young age.
Understood.
And disability turns out to be a great filter for people: good people come closer... and others move away.
Have some people disappointed you?
Adolescence was difficult: a few times I was about to throw in the towel.
But it's here, whole.
My family, and also expert psychologists, gave me good tools to not be paralyzed by my disability.
Because the biggest paralysis is always mental, right?
Without a doubt: I asked myself "why me?". And this paralyzed me in pain, sadness, melancholy...
And how did you change that?
It was a day when I went from asking myself “why me?” to ask myself "why me?". And then everything changed.
What changed, exactly?
I began to study Business, I enrolled at UNED: instead of worrying, I got busy.
Engage in what?
To strengthen my capacities and develop my skills, with all the necessary effort. And today I study the IESE Management Development Program: I prepare to the maximum.
And how is it going?
I have already done the most important work.
what is this job
I have already managed to not let my disability become my identity.
And what job is left for him now?
Manage with excellence Convives con Spasticidad, my association.
What are the aims of your association?
I help people with motor disabilities: I foster self-esteem, teach emotional management, bring out their potential.
But out there they still get in the way...
This is why I also fight in favor of effective integration: that administrations and companies understand that without integration... the whole society loses!
Do we all lose a lot?
We all lose in wealth, in diversity, in mental health... In everything!
How do you promote the self-esteem of the disabled?
I tell him the same thing I tell myself: "I'm unique, and I'm bigger than my disability".
Do you have any other advice for readers with disabilities?
Do not internalize external exclusion. And ask for help: asking for help is for the strong!
This works for you and me.
We will all be disabled, it will happen to us all at some point! But with mutual support... human beings do extraordinary things!
What is your ultimate ambition?
Close my association. Because this will mean that it has ceased to be necessary for the spastic disabled.
