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Francesca Fedeli: Ciao.

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So he's Mario. He's our son.

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He was born two and a half years ago,

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and I had a pretty tough pregnancy

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because I had to stay still
in a bed for, like, eight months.

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But in the end everything
seemed to be under control.

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So he got the right weight at birth.

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He got the right Apgar index.

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So we were pretty reassured by this.

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But at the end, 10 days
later after he was born,

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we discovered that he had a stroke.

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As you might know,

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a stroke is a brain injury.

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A perinatal stroke could be something

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that can happen
during the nine months of pregnancy

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or just suddenly after the birth,

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and in his case, as you can see,

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the right part of his brain has gone.

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So the effect that this stroke
could have on Mario's body

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could be the fact that he couldn't
be able to control

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the left side of his body.

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Just imagine, if you have
a computer and a printer

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and you want to transmit,
to input to print out a document,

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but the printer doesn't
have the right drives,

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so the same is for Mario.

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It's just like,
he would like to move his left side

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of his body, but he's not able
to transmit the right input

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to move his left arm and left leg.

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So life had to change.

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We needed to change our schedule.

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We needed to change the impact
that this birth had

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on our life.

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Roberto D'Angelo: As you may imagine,

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unfortunately, we were not ready.

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Nobody taught us how to deal
with such kinds of disabilities,

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and as many questions as possible started

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to come to our minds.

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And that has been really a tough time.

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Questions, some basics, like, you know,

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why did this happen to us?

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And what went wrong?

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Some more tough, like, really,

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what will be the impact on Mario's life?

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I mean, at the end,
will he be able to work?

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Will he be able to be normal?

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And, you know, as a parent,
especially for the first time,

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why is he not going to be better than us?

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And this, indeed, really is tough to say,

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but a few months later, we realized that

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we were really feeling like a failure.

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I mean, the only real product of our life,

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at the end, was a failure.

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And you know, it was not a failure
for ourselves in itself,

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but it was a failure
that will impact his full life.

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Honestly, we went down.

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I mean we went really
down, but at the end,

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we started to look at him,

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and we said, we have to react.

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So immediately, as Francesca
said, we changed our life.

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We started physiotherapy,
we started the rehabilitation,

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and one of the paths
that we were following

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in terms of rehabilitation
is the mirror neurons pilot.

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Basically, we spent months
doing this with Mario.

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You have an object, and we showed him

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how to grab the object.

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Now, the theory of mirror
neurons simply says

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that in your brains, exactly
now, as you watch me doing this,

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you are activating
exactly the same neurons

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as if you do the actions.

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It looks like this is the leading
edge in terms of rehabilitation.

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But one day we found that Mario

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was not looking at our hand.

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He was looking at us.

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We were his mirror.

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And the problem, as you might feel,

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is that we were down, we were depressed,

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we were looking at him as a problem,

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not as a son, not
from a positive perspective.

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And that day really
changed our perspective.

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We realized that we had to become

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a better mirror for Mario.

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We restarted from our strengths,

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and at the same time
we restarted from his strengths.

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We stopped looking at him as a problem,

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and we started to look at him
as an opportunity to improve.

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And really, this was the change,

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and from our side, we said,

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"What are our strengths
that we really can bring to Mario?"

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And we started from our passions.

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I mean, at the end, my wife and myself

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are quite different,

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but we have many things in common.

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We love to travel, we love music,

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we love to be in places like this,

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and we started to bring Mario with us

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just to show to him the best
things that we can show to him.

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This short video is from last week.

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I am not saying --

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(Applause) —

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I am not saying it's a miracle.
That's not the message,

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because we are just
at the beginning of the path.

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But we want to share
what was the key learning,

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the key learning that Mario drove to us,

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and it is to consider
what you have as a gift

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and not only what you miss,

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and to consider what you
miss just as an opportunity.

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And this is the message
that we want to share with you.

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This is why we are here.

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Mario!

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And this is why --

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(Applause) —

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And this is why

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we decided to share the best
mirror in the world with him.

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And we thank you so much, all of you.

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FF: Thank you. RD: Thank you. Bye.

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(Applause)

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FF: Thank you. (Applause)