I used to think my body was broken. And the worst part? My voice. Literally. I used to enjoy flirting with the world, making funny puns etc. I’d open my mouth to speak, and nothing came out—or worse, it came out wrong. Stuttering, cracking, like my throat had forgotten how to work.
Doctors shrugged. It was just a part of the brain injury , they said. Anxiety. Pills didn’t touch it and eventually I went completely natural and would never touch the stuff. Speech Therapy made me feel worse—like I was faking it.
Then I found functional neurology. It wasn’t magic. It was science—boring, nerdy, brain-map science. My first appointment was with a guy who looked more like a surfer than a doctor. I was so enamored. Very Italian with very right wing views. He asked me to follow his finger with my eyes while he tapped my knee. He watched how my pupils reacted to light. Every test was a clue. Turns out, my vestibular system—the little inner-ear gyroscope—was off. My cerebellum, the part that smooths out speech and balance, was under-firing. And my prefrontal cortex? It was like a dim bulb flickering in a storm.
The brain doesn’t forget. It just waits. We started small. Eye-tracking drills. Balance boards. Breathing patterns that synced my heart rate to my nervous system. No supplements, no woo-woo—just rewiring.
Ten minutes a day, like brushing my teeth. I continued the exercises at home, but I could not wait to get back. I enjoyed the fact that the doctor would flirt with me—something that I thought would never happen again. Little did I know, it was a tactic. Something to encourage me to recover. He said that I was making progress and that clearly my brain was trying. But traveling to the east coast of Canada was not exactly easy so we would see another functional neurologist in Chicago and in Orlando. But what helped me most during these trips was the gyrostem (a machine that would spin you around while you focused on a particular spot). Eventually I would see a functional neurologist in Oregon— another doctor who I was completely enamored by. Dark coffee, rock music and a wine aficionado. He would encourage me to flirt, joke and even sing as I tried to impress him and crawl back into my charming personality.
And my voice came back in pieces—like a radio tuning in. First, just clearer vowels. Then full sentences. Then jokes. I laughed—actually laughed—at his dumb puns, and it felt like the world cracked open. The real miracle wasn’t the recovery. It was the proof: I wasn’t broken. I was miswired. And wiring can be fixed.
Functional neurology isn’t about curing everything. It’s about listening—to your eyes, your gait, your reflexes—like they’re telling you a story you’ve ignored. Mine said, Hey, I’m still here. Just help me get the signal through.
I still sound funny. People still do not understand me sometimes. But at least that is from half of my tongue being numb and too weak. It is not because I am no longer unable to form a thought and have my own lips betray me.
If you’re stuck—foggy, tired, silent—don’t wait for the next pill. Find someone who’ll test your brain like it matters. Because it does. And when it starts working again? You’ll talk. You’ll move. You’ll live. And maybe, like me, you’ll finally find the voice you thought you’d lost forever.
Turns out, it was just waiting for
the right frequency. No more backing down. Now I say it like it is.
So in 2018, I used my new found identity in my new Twitter account (now X). In 2019, a follower kept commenting on how I did not sound like any other girl/ woman. I did not think anything about it. I knew that I was a bit misogynistic and that I enjoy manosphere accounts more than popular culture or whatever girly girls do. I personally believe that men are the most incredible creatures on earth. And that it is the woman’s duty to obey and please. Maybe my opinions are controversial, but something that I figured out while I was healing was that I do not have a fall into a category, I could be unapologetically myself. That is the beauty of the brain— it keeps molding and shaping (neuroplasticity), so we can decide to make our lives beautiful— no matter the past.
Ultimately , I was drawn in to this mysterious man on Twitter. The guy’s profile picture was just a picture of Larry Bird, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt and eventually found out that we had a lot in common. I was no longer afraid or hesitant to be myself. I had been through enough in life to know that sitting on the sidelines did nothing for me. I found my inner voice and was motivated to let it out Now we are in love. It really is a beautiful love story. Girl meets boy on social media. And eventually we become each other’s lives. All because I found my voice in Functional Neurology
Kat’s Musings 
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