Living with functional neurological disorder

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Transcript

00:00 Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Lovely this

00:07 afternoon to speak to Tabitha Cornish. Now Tabitha, you are organising a gala, an awareness

00:13 and fundraising gala for FND. Now, FND is functional neurological disorder and you were

00:21 diagnosed with that a little while ago. What is FND and how does it impact on you?

00:28 So, as you said, FND is functional neurological disorder. For me, I tend to get a lot of

00:37 mobility issues, I deal with chronic pain, fatigue and it's essentially where the brain

00:46 doesn't quite interpret the environment correctly and then sends the wrong signals back out to your

00:56 body depending on the information it's receiving. So it's sort of a bit of a misfire in the brain

01:02 with the messages that it sends. And inevitably it took you a while to come to terms with the

01:07 condition and to accept what its implications were and you're saying that you kind of withdrew

01:12 for a while from life, but organising this gala now is you coming back out and wanting

01:18 to help other people, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. So I was diagnosed in 2022 and, you know, 24 at

01:27 the time, really active and it then kind of turned my life upside down and you're right, it took a

01:36 long time to come to terms with, I'm sure it would for anybody. And I think especially as so many

01:43 haven't really been made aware of this condition, as much as I had a fantastic support group,

01:50 you know, doctors, friends, family, it was really isolating for us as a group. And I just thought,

01:57 I'm ready to talk about this now and I just really want to help other people. You don't have to feel

02:06 so isolated, there are others out there to help you and there is hope. You suspect people

02:12 are out there who are kind of suffering in silence then, who haven't made the connections

02:17 that you are now making. I mean, yeah, it's entirely possible. I'm not sure how many in

02:24 the UK currently have FND, but there are obviously some people who I think, as I felt just so isolated

02:36 because, you know, not everyone knows about this, that I just, I want to make, you know,

02:41 as many people as aware as I can. It sounds brilliant. And tell me some of the things

02:46 that are happening at the gala and what you want to achieve through the gala.

02:50 So we have a live jazz pianist, we have some DJ entertainment as well. We also have some

03:00 different speakers coming in from the charity and also some healthcare professionals that

03:07 specialise in FND. We've got a fantastic raffle as well. We've got some great prizes from the

03:13 likes of Chichester Festival Theatre, Goodwood, Lord Eaton Lavender. And we really, you know,

03:19 the primary thing is just to raise awareness regarding this condition, you know, make it as

03:26 well known as we can and, you know, raise some funds for the good work of FND Hope UK.

03:31 Brilliant. Well, congratulations on organising it. I hope it's a huge success.

03:38 And lovely to speak to you. Thank you.

03:40 Thanks. Thank you.