On 23 May 2020, at the end of the quarantine, my life changed even more than it had already changed. I was teleworking and there was a time when I wasn’t feeling right. I told my boss I was going to bed for a moment. When I woke up, after about 20 minutes, I couldn’t walk anymore. Here my odyssey began to understand what was happening to me, all the neurological symptoms: memory loss, fatigue, loss of consciousness at any time, etc. There was a great deal of abandonment at medical level. When all the tests were positive, they told me that I had “something functional”, precisely at a time when I was very unfunctional and I thought I only needed to wait at home and that, in some days or, perhaps, months the symptoms would pass. It is important to know that the ‘ Functional Neurological Disorder’ can be sent, however it is necessary to start with physical and neurological rehabilitation as soon as possible. For many months I didn’t know what I had, since Something Functional was not a complete or official diagnosis and I had more and more symptoms until almost no longer wanting or being able to leave home. Until a medical friend found the diagnosis and, from there, she was able to create a plan for me. I found the Cos Health Cooperative in Barcelona and started a treatment with them. On the other hand, being an artist and literally addicted to creation and movement, I tried to find ways to create and move myself despite the fact that this caused me outbreaks and tremendous discomfort. Thus, without knowing it, I worked on neuroplasticity and was doing my own neurorehabilitation and physical rehabilitation. The first piece I created was during the first half of the year, when I was still without a diagnosis, unconsiously I had already started to create the monologue “Something Functional.”
In 2022 I was invited to Han international, an international conference of the University of Applied Sciences HAN in Nijmegen ( The Netherlands), and there I presented the embryo of “Something Functional”, in 2023 I presented the second version and in 2024, the third version.
The feedback from the public was all the time very positive; two professors at the University of Birmingham realized their own prejudices towards people with chronic conditions, especially related to dynamic and invisible disability, and said that they were going to integrate in their courses learned information from the work. A girl, who was the daughter of a mother with chronic condition, said that she finally understood her mother and thanked me. A blind boy began crying, as he could identify with the character’s daily struggle. A girl with a chronic condition that has not been diagnosed for nine years thanked me, as she felt less alone. All this feedback was for me a sign that I had to follow this path and keep on working the monologue.