«I had a brain tumor that almost killed me, and for decades no one knew how to see it.»

Film director María de Kannon Clè nearly died from a meningioma; now she fights misinformation through the NGO “Brains Get Famous.”

María de Kannon Clè had spent almost her entire life knowing that something was not right—specifically since she was seven years old. When she looks back, she can even pinpoint the exact moment when the strange feeling first appeared.

“I was at the blackboard and suddenly I couldn’t finish the calculation I was doing, a division. I just collapsed,” she recalls in a conversation with La Razón . From that moment on, a long journey of symptoms and medical visits began, unfolding alongside the natural course of her life. It would not be resolved until 2019, when someone finally thought to run the appropriate tests while she was, quite literally, on the verge of death .

“No one could suspect that a girl of that age was beginning to develop a meningioma because I had energy and was doing very well at school. They thought I had a lazy eye because of the double vision, but it had nothing to do with that. Sometimes I didn’t understand anything people were saying to me and I would retreat into my own bubble,” continues the film director.

During puberty, the vasovagal syncopes continued—more or less frequent depending on the moment, but always present. She remembers that while studying in England there were times when she would wake up and not recognize the house she was in. It was like having to start each day from scratch.

“The problem with these tumors is that you can’t see or perceive them until they finally show themselves . I knew it couldn’t be depression because I was happy, but you experience personality or behavioral changes that have nothing to do with the anxiety they are so often blamed on. It’s a neurological issue.”

Headaches, vomiting, and vision problems became part of young María’s daily routine, even as she was beginning to stand out in the world of cinema. She recalls a couple of episodes that alerted her even more to what might be happening.

“One day, on the program *Arte 2*, which I hosted with Luis del Olmo on Cibeles FM, I suddenly went blank during an interview with a French director who was also a friend of mine —as if I didn’t know him at all. The same thing happened during another interview with Víctor Ullate.” After crises like these she had to go straight to bed because the severe migraine and vomiting left her completely incapacitated.

“When I went to the doctor, they often prescribed anxiolytics, which is the worst thing you can give a brain with a tumor that actually needs stimulation. They didn’t sit well with me, so I didn’t take them. They told me to slow down—that it was stress, early menopause… During the last two years before the final diagnosis we were convinced I had stomach cancer because of how thin I had become. ”

Despite this situation, María remained active, which is what both her body and brain demanded. In 2008 she organized, together with Ángela Molina, the first International Film Festival of Madrid with the collaboration of David Lynch, Quincy Jones, and Nick Nolte.

“Miguel Ángel Muñoz and Imanol Arias had to help me present it because I felt so unwell. After that, the symptoms worsened and my brain began responding less and less.”

Between 2011 and 2014 she moved to Los Angeles. To slow down a bit, she focused on producing and writing for other filmmakers. Even so, she continued losing consciousness and collapsing to the ground without warning.

After returning to Madrid, she started a production company with Michael Brando, the grandson of the legendary actor, who kept telling her that something was not right.

“Michael would talk to my sister and tell her that I had become very forgetful. I would leave things cooking on the stove and walk away, for example. Or arrive late. I would still go blank and return from important meetings without remembering what we had talked about. It’s very embarrassing when it happens, and since you can’t explain what’s going on, you isolate yourself or hide your symptoms. Another thing that happened is that, because my right side—the emotional side—was affected, my emotional responses changed a lot.  I began to feel nothing for my loved ones. A nightmare and a lot of suffering .”

From 2018 onward, María became convinced she was dying without knowing why.

“After the Seminci festival, which I had helped organize, I was terrified of falling asleep because it was incredibly hard for me to wake up. My brain was shutting down.”

She is convinced that a flight to Los Angeles in 2019 saved her life.

“I spent six days at Nick Nolte’s house going from the bed to the sofa—I couldn’t even walk. Nick was so worried about how he saw me that he called his doctor and explained what was happening to me. The doctor immediately understood and told him, above all, not to let me sleep too much. So Nick spent the time playing the guitar and making me walk until I finally caught a plane back to Spain .”

After this ordeal that had lasted decades, on November 12, 2019, she arrived at the emergency room of a hospital in Madrid and woke up after surgery with 29 staples in her head. She could no longer move one side of her body, could barely speak, and couldn’t even write in a notebook. Before that, she even had to endure being asked if she had been drinking because she wasn’t walking straight—until her brother-in-law “suggested” that they perform an MRI, since María had never drunk alcohol in her life.

Doctors managed to remove 100% of the atypical grade-2 meningioma, which turned out to be benign, although for a few days they feared it might be metastatic.

“It was a complicated operation—they thought I wouldn’t survive it. The tumor was larger than a tennis ball. I woke up and didn’t recognize anyone, not even myself. It took me four months to dare to shower with the lights on. The only ones I recognized were my little dogs .”

During her recovery at home after an operation in which she felt as though her soul had been searched through, María began studying and trying to understand what had happened to her. Rehabilitation, during the pandemic, was completely atypical. She did not see a doctor again for months.

“They were the six most difficult months of my life. The medication—antiepileptics and corticosteroids—causes hallucinations. When I think about what children who undergo brain tumor surgery must go through, it makes me shudder.”

Little by little she began piecing together the puzzle of her personal story and understanding the aftereffects that would remain with her, such as prosopagnosia (difficulty recognizing familiar faces). These did not necessarily have to be negative; they simply made her unique and different.

“It wasn’t until two and a half years later that I really began to feel well. It’s a very lonely path that requires great effort because you have to accept many things.  I faced it by thinking that something external to me had made me feel that way, so I wouldn’t let it define me .”

After this long chain of medical failures, no one apologized to María or her family. This sense of helplessness led her to decide to do everything possible so that others would not suffer what she had gone through, and  she founded the NGO Brains Get Famous .

She explains that brain tumors—whether malignant or benign—are often diagnosed too late simply due to lack of awareness.

“We need to inform people about the symptoms without causing alarm, but by giving visibility to the warning signs. If we see someone changing their personality, we shouldn’t judge them. Something may be happening inside. Memory loss, erratic or unusual behavior, and sudden projectile vomiting are telling us something.”

The NGO chaired by María has just held its first gala in Madrid with the support, among others, of Susanna Griso and the Spanish ambassador to Italy. On October 14 they also managed to have a dozen cities around the world—including Madrid—illuminate their main monuments in honor of brain tumor patients.

Together with Italian neurosurgeon Christian Brogna, her second-in-command, and with the collaboration of Dr. Alfredo Quiñones Hinojosa, head of Neurosurgery at Mayo Clinic International, she works to shed light on a condition that is still largely unknown.

María believes it is crucial for companies and major fashion and beauty brands to become involved in supporting a cause where much still remains to be done.

“If we become friends with our brain, it can take us to wonderful and mysterious places,” she concludes with hope.

At the moment, she is preparing a documentary about her experience together with Michael Brando, titled “Should I Stay or Should I Go.”