Mica, the Malaga-based butterfly skin influencer with thousands of followers

Micaela Escobar Loisi is 24 years old, lives with her mother in Sabinillas, Manilva, and, like any young person her age, enjoys sharing all kinds of splendid and smiling photos and videos on social media. Whether on the beach, in idyllic settings, or even with her partner, Facu, whom she has been dating for about a year and a half. However, this usual display of happiness typical of the current virtual era is not the only thing she shows to her thousands of loyal followers. Her content is also focused on visualizing, divulging, and normalizing what it means for her to live with the disease she suffers from and that conditions her life: butterfly skin. "It greatly limits my day-to-day life, besides being a very painful ailment," she tells SUR.

Mica, who is Argentinean but has been living in Málaga for over seven years, has been creating content on Instagram (micaa_loii) and TikTok (@mica_loi) for some time. On both platforms, she has nearly 140,000 followers. "I do tutorials on how to apply bandages or perform care, among other topics. These are issues that help a lot of people with butterfly skin," explains the young woman who, by the way, applauds the recent announcement by the Andalusian Government to pioneer funding for a new treatment, called Vyjuvek, capable of healing even chronic wounds. "Now we have to keep fighting for this new medicine to reach all of Spain," she insists vehemently.

She decided long ago to share her illness on social networks to help people in the same situation. "I think about parents who might have a baby and don’t know how to treat or bandage it," she says. Her goal is to provide them with useful information and tips that help her cope with the disease.

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Liquid Food

She arrived in Spain at the age of 18 with her mother and younger brother. The three left their life in Argentina behind to start from scratch in a place where, they thought, her illness would be better treated. When she arrived, her esophagus was affected and she needed to find specialists to dilate it. "For several years my esophagus improved here in Spain although last year it started to decline. I had surgery and it went wrong. Now my esophagus is in very bad shape and I can only feed on liquids and blended foods. I can't eat any solids, not even noodles or rice, for example," she explains.

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Mica has a weekly schedule full of medical appointments. She also spends three to four hours a day performing treatments. "Sometimes I'm a bit more limited with the issue of wounds. I have to organize my day depending on how I am at that moment with them. For example, if I get wounds on my feet, I can't walk or cover long distances," she recounts. "On the other hand, if I get them in my mouth, throat, or esophagus, I can't swallow. It depends on where the wounds occur that day to do one thing or another," she insists. For her, her mother and her boyfriend are two pillars of support in her life and her ailment. Both accompany her to medical appointments or even during treatments if she needs help.

Regarding Vyjuvek, Mica highlights several advantages. "It's an ointment that helps wounds close. And the skin that heals is healthy skin where wounds do not reappear for a long time," she reports. In her opinion, this treatment could help, first of all, to reduce the pain they suffer. It would also benefit them in the treatments since it would reduce the time they spend on them. "We would live with a bit more peace of mind, we wouldn't have so much risk of infections, it would change our quality of life," she highlights.