Alright?
I had a bad night due to an allergic outbreak.
Does it happen to you often?
I live in pain.
I’m sorry.
I wear a pump: it doses me with painkillers.
Long ago?
Since ever. Every day I do five hours of physical therapy at home.
What is your ailment?
Child brain paralysis.
Due to…
I was born at five and a half months of gestation. She weighed 900 grams. Perinatal oxygen deficiency: it paralyzed brain areas.
With what impact?
“Your girl will be a vegetable,” the doctor said.
Gross.
My parents lovingly avoided it. They fought for my health and education. Education has saved my life, excellent.
And medical science…
I have been through a thousand operating rooms and operations… What is the happiest day of your life?
Mine? Hmm…
I do know what the happiest day of my life was.
You tell me.
The day I could put on shoes by myself.
And so?
Was 16 years old. Thanks to a difficult surgery: I was able to move my feet and I was able to put on shoes!
I see crutches and a wheelchair…
I alternate them. My disability is spasticity. It limits me… and stimulates me.
Spasticity?
My muscles don’t obey, they spasm… because of my cerebral palsy. I was very disciplined and tenacious in my exercises.
Have you cultivated your tenacity in everything?
For study. I was lucky: there was a school in Madrid whose founder had a nephew with cerebral palsy. There they accepted me: we were the only ones among everyone.
Is it important not to segregate the child with cerebral palsy from other children?
Very important. We live in society. So we all must learn to live with everyone… since we are very children.
Understood.
And disability turns out to be a magnificent filter of people: good people approach, and the rest move away.
Have you been disappointed by any?
Adolescence was very difficult: sometimes I was about to throw in the towel.
But here it is, very whole.
My family, and also expert psychologists, gave me good tools to not be paralyzed by the disability.
Because the greatest paralysis is always the emotional one, right?
Of course: I asked myself “why me?” And that paralyzed me in the heart of sadness, sadness, melancholy…
And how did you change that?
It was a day when I went from asking “why me?” to ask myself “why me?” And there everything changed.
What exactly changed?
I started studying business, I enrolled at UNED: instead of worrying, I started to get busy.
Get busy with what?
In strengthening my capabilities and developing my skills, with all the necessary effort. And today I am studying the Management Development Program (PDD) at IESE: I prepare myself to the maximum.
And how are things going?
I have already done the most important job of all.
What is that job?
I have now managed to ensure that my disability has not become my identity.
And what job do you have left now?
Manage with excellence You live with Spasticity, my association.
What purposes does your association have?
I help people with motor disabilities: I promote their self-esteem, I teach emotional management, I bring out their potential.
But there are obstacles out there…
That is why I also fight in favor of effective integration: that administrations and companies understand that without integration… the entire 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 am unique, and bigger than my disability.”
Give further advice to readers with disabilities.
Do not internalize external exclusion. And ask for help: asking for help is strong!
That works for you and me.
We are all going to be disabled, it will affect all of us! But with mutual support… human beings do extraordinary things!
What is your ultimate ambition?
Close my association. Because that will mean that it is no longer necessary.
