‘Dance has filled and fills my life so much that I don’t even know how to explain it to you. It gives me strength, a joy that has transformed my life’, says the dancer
Diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis – chronic inflammatory disease that can affect the joints – at 21, Lucineia Felipe dos Santos has always lived with pain. The treatment also helped a little, but the long-term use of the medicine damaged her retina.
Precisely for this reason, dancing and other activities with movement have never been indicated by doctors. However, it was there that she found his peace of mind.
“Dance gives me another world. Far from the disease, far from this visual problem. It’s another path and another vision of life, it’s my light at the end of the tunnel. Today I live another life”, says the then dancer Lucineia. “Today my doctor says, ‘Keep dancing, because all I see is improvement, both physical and psychological.’
“I’ve learned to live with the pain,” says Lucineia. The phrase, although strong, represents some of the pains she has already gone through in her life: hunger, tiredness, physical pain, loss, and psychological pain. None of them, however, was enough to stop her: “I say I’m tough when I fall. Sure, there are moments when sadness comes strong, but I say ‘get out of there’, because I need to get back up”. “.
Born in São João Evangelista, a small town in the Minas Gerais, started helping his father in the fields when he was 10 years old. At 15 he was already working in foster homes to help support his siblings. “There were seven of us, I was the older sister. And there was always the anguish of not having anything to eat, especially the younger ones. It was a very big affliction, so I had to do something,” she recalls.
the excess of physical effort it was decisive that the muscle pains began to appear around the age of 18. “When I woke up in the morning my ankle was always swollen and it was very painful to put my foot on the ground. I had to wait a few hours, making some kind of movements to get it,” she recounts. The diagnosis came three years later: rheumatoid arthritis. The treatment required the use of chloroquine, a remedy Lucineia used for six years. However, prolonged use of the drug can lead to damage to the ocular retina. “In 1994, when I switched to treatment Clinical hospital, in São Paulo, the feeling that there was sand in my eyes came. That’s when I discovered my tear duct had dried up. Only in 2007 did the maculopathy end,” he says.
Maculopathy is any type of disease that affects the macula, a small area at the back pole of the retina, and this lesion can lead to blindness. “Today I have 20% vision every 200 metres. What I see the most is an excess of light, I don’t see faces or recognize people”, she points out, who has begun to be considered a visually impaired person. As a result, she was removed from her commercial job and sent to the Dorina Nowill Foundation, which helped her adjust to living with vision problems. “They asked me what I liked to do, something that helped me and distracted me, because they didn’t have a job for me yet. I replied that I love to dance,” she says.
Autonomy
The recovery of her passion began with some ballroom dancing courses in an inclusive school, but in 2010 Lucineia felt part of a whole when she met the group Dance Without Borders. Created in 2010 by the dancer Fernanda Amaral, with dancers with and without disabilities, the group allows different patterns of dances and movements.
“Dance gives me such a great feeling of freedom… it takes me back to my childhood, when I ran through the fields, galloped on horses, it’s a feeling of flight that I get with the curves, the jumps, the movements I make”, he declares. Having danced for 12 years, Lucineia no longer recognizes herself as a dancer.
“Dance has filled and fills my life so much that I can’t even explain it to you. I never imagined in my life to be in a dance company, to be able to dance, to be good at it. It gives me strength, a joy that has transformed my life,” he says. Much more than transforming your physical conditioning, spatial perception and physical routine, dance has brought you happiness and purpose, something that is priceless. The consequences were also seen by the dancer’s arthritis doctor, who asked her not to stop twirling.
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Source: Terra
Ben Stock is a lifestyle journalist and author at Gossipify. He writes about topics such as health, wellness, travel, food and home decor. He provides practical advice and inspiration to improve well-being, keeps readers up to date with latest lifestyle news and trends, known for his engaging writing style, in-depth analysis and unique perspectives.
