The Turning Point

There are moments when life does not change slowly, but quietly turns in another direction.

AI-created impression of a foggy road through wet glass, with blue ambulance lights scattering in every direction

15 November 2018 began as an ordinary day.

I took Vera to her Starclass training session at the Elfstedenhal in Leeuwarden. Then I put on my running shoes and went for a run.

Something strange happened while I was running.

When I returned to the Elfstedenhal, I saw stars before my eyes.

I remember thinking:

Huh?

Nothing more, really.

I simply walked the final metres to the car, picked up a bottle of water and went inside to collect Vera.

There was no panic.

No sense that anything serious was happening.

At home I did not feel well. After dinner, I went to bed. I thought I might be coming down with the flu; I had a fever.

Later, Cynthia came upstairs too.

She did not trust it.

When I tried to get out of bed to go to the bathroom, it happened.

I could no longer stand.

The left side of my body no longer worked.

Cynthia did not hesitate and called 112.

From that moment on, everything moved very quickly.

First to the hospital in Heerenveen for thrombolysis.

Then urgently to the UMCG in Groningen for a thrombectomy.

I remember one image from that journey.

It was foggy.

The blue ambulance light scattered in every direction. Against the fog, along the windows, across the road. As if the whole world was flashing blue, yet nowhere became clear.

After that, my memory of the evening stops.

And a memory begins that I have never lost.

During the operation, I entered a completely white space.

No hospital.

No sound.

No pain.

Only white.

In the distance, I saw someone approaching.

It was heit, my father.

He looked at me.

“What are you doing here?”

“I have no idea,” I replied.

“But what is Heit doing here?”

He looked at me in the way only a father can.

Then he said:

I belong here. But you do not. You are not finished yet. You have to go back.

The next thing I remember is waking up.

I did not know where I was.

I did not know what had happened.

I only knew that something very serious was wrong.

My body no longer worked the way I was used to.

And before anyone had explained what had happened, I made a decision.

I do not know what is going on, but I am going to do everything I can to get better.