Maarten was born blue. Due to a serious heart defect – for the ‘enthusiasts’: the ailment is called Fontan circulation – the heart could not pump enough oxygen to the lungs. The child was alive, but according to the doctors, that was about all. Whatever happened, he certainly wasn’t going to grow old.
‘Pretty rosy’
That was on November 5, 1985. Now, almost 40 years later, Maarten is more excited about life than ever. Admittedly, he’s not in good health at the moment. He is largely blind, he is recovering from three cerebral haemorrhages and a severe peritonitis, and moreover he has to make a choice between a higher risk of more cerebral haemorrhages or a higher risk of a heart attack. But he thinks it’s all good to oversee. He’s alive, that’s what matters. And he sees the future ‘actually quite rosy’.
Friends of ODV, as they call him (from Over de Vest), had already said this about him before the interview: Maarten is an inveterate optimist. Always has been. Where others would find the situation hopeless, he will tell you that things are going pretty well. And indeed, without irony: “Things are going very well at the moment.”
His childhood was quite normal, thanks in part to major heart operations when he was 1 and 3 years old. He grew up in Vlaardingen, with both his parents and an older brother. His parents emphasized the importance of studying well so that he would not have to do any physical work later, should it come to that.
Loosen the brakes in student days
Maarten lived cautiously, but not overly cautiously: “I just participated in gymnastics and sports, I just didn’t last that long.” Was that not forbidden by his doctors? “Well, I don’t really know, I wasn’t really into that.”
In his student days, the brakes went off, he says. At the age of 19 he went to live in Utrecht. Maarten studied Biomedical Sciences (completed with a bachelor’s degree) and later also Public Administration (completed with a master’s degree). “It took me a long time to do that, because I really liked student life. Lots of steps with friends, drinking beer, chasing girls, experimenting with drugs a bit. I even started smoking.”
Live life to the fullest
A counter-reaction, probably, though that’s his own amateur psychological analysis. “The focus on health and prudent living had always been so emphatic that I started doing just the opposite. My feeling was: I have no idea how long I can enjoy this life, so let me live to the fullest. “
After his studies he went to live in Rotterdam. He went to work for the national government – that is still his employer, he is head of department. There, too, he led the life of a bon vivant who could not be destroyed. Until his body suddenly hit the brakes…
You never know when it’s over
“It was in the Blender disco in Rotterdam in 2015. We were out with friends. Suddenly I collapsed. My friends thought: he has been drinking too much.” But an observant bystander with medical experience saw that it was wrong. It wasn’t the booze, it was cardiac arrest. Maarten was resuscitated on the spot.
He doesn’t remember the moment it went wrong. Only that he woke up feeling ice and ice cold. “They put me in an ice bath to limit the damage. I’ve never been this cold.”
That warning changed little or nothing in his attitude to life. Quite the opposite: “I saw it as proof that I should enjoy life, because you never know when it will be over.”
And there was Myrthe: applause
Maarten was fitted with a pacemaker and an ICD, a box that was inserted under the armpit and under his skin. If his heart wants to stop, that ICD will restart it with an electric shock. “That all worked fine, so I didn’t think it was necessary to start living differently at the time.”
So six months later he was standing at a party with a bottle of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, when he started talking to Myrthe. “We liked each other,” says Myrthe, “and suddenly we were kissing.”
Maarten: “Then all those friends started applauding, remember?”
Myrthe, with a wink: “Yes, it’s a subtle and stylish group of friends.”
According to Myrthe, Maarten was never secretive about his ailment. “He even wore a deep V-neck shirt. So I immediately saw it, and yes, then you talk about it.”
Smoke detector under the skin
Initially, medical issues did not play an important role. “I didn’t think much about it,” she says. “That ICD under his skin is quite large. I sometimes call it a smoke detector. Maarten doesn’t like that very much. But you don’t really care about that when you’re in love.”
Maarten takes off his outerwear to show the ‘smoke detector’. Indeed, there is clearly visible a device under the skin. In addition, a long scar runs vertically across the middle of the chest. When his clothes fit again, he reaches forward. His hand first searches for the edge of the coffee table. Then he carefully slides to the left, looking for the glass of water. After a few sips he puts the glass back, again with the necessary probing movements.
Then came the brain hemorrhages
Because Maarten is blind. At least, he can see the contours of the interviewer, can roughly distinguish the hair color and sees that there are glasses on the nose, but he cannot see clearly. His blindness is the result of a cerebral hemorrhage. Or rather: three cerebral hemorrhages in a short time.
Myrthe tells how special the timing of things was: “Everything went fast. We got to know each other in 2016. In 2018 we lived together in Rotterdam, in September 2020 we got married. About the day after we decided that we had a wanted a baby, I got pregnant. Lucie was born on March 7, 2022.”
Their daughter was born in the Erasmus MC in Rotterdam. Maarten was already lying there because he had suffered a cerebral haemorrhage. His first. In January 2022 he started acting strange, says Myrthe. He became forgetful. “He even once asked me if I wanted to go get a case of beer, while I was eight months pregnant and it was storming outside. Then he also started to see badly. In the hospital it turned out that he had had a cerebral hemorrhage.”
‘I woke up and saw nothing’
The nurses drove him to the delivery room. Maarten: “Luckily I saw my daughter being born. A week later I was completely blind.”
That was again the result of a second, more severe cerebral haemorrhage. Maarten had been given blood thinners for his heart; otherwise his blood would clot and he would have a heart attack. But those drugs actually increase the risk of cerebral hemorrhages; and that’s exactly what happened a week after Lucie was born. “I woke up in the middle of the night and I couldn’t see anything.”
Happy potato
Reason for panic? Maarten: “I think I remained fairly calm under it.”
Myrthe: “Well, you called me screaming and said you couldn’t see anything anymore.”
Maarten shrugs, laughs: “In those days she called me a happy potato, a happy potato. I was rather dazed. I let things pass me by as cheerfully as possible.”
However, the dual problem of bleeding and heart disease has serious consequences. Now his doctors have presented him with an important choice, although he himself does not think there is anything to choose from. “If I continue with the blood thinners, I can have new bleeding. But if I stop taking it, I will have a heart attack. After the bleeding I stopped taking the blood thinners for a while, but the doctors have now said: that situation is ‘not “compatible with life.”
‘I’m going to survive this too’
Incidentally, according to friends, Maarten came dangerously close to death a few weeks ago when he was admitted with a peritonitis. He is still struggling with that, the inflammation is difficult to control. But according to him, it is all – entirely in line with his view of life – not too bad. “I just think like this: I’ve been through so much shit, and it’s always turned out okay, so eventually I’m going to survive this too.”
What life will look like in ten years, ‘no one can predict’. He expects to have his sight completely back by then. ‘I’m already seeing a lot more than last year, so that’s going in the right direction. I hope to be able to get back to work in a while. And I want to cook again, I like doing that. And most of all, I want to see Lucie grow up.”
Everything for Lucie
Because, he emphasizes, it’s all about their daughter. For her he leaves the alcohol permanently. He takes his rest. He eats low salt. With which he just means that he dutifully follows all the advice of doctors. “I am now doing everything I can to be there for her as long as possible. I want to grow as old as possible for Lucie. At the moment nothing makes me happier than walking with her by my hand. Nice and frumpy things, wonderful. “
In short, life is beautiful. Nothing to complain. They have a nice house in Valburg, near Nijmegen. They can sit in the garden in the sun. Myrthe’s parents live around the corner and are ‘always there for us’. He is grateful to them, he emphasises. “Myrthe, my family, in-laws and friends have always been there for me, unconditionally, no matter what happened. That is fantastic. I am very grateful to them all.”
‘Don’t live with fear’
And what if things turned out differently? “There will be a day when I’m gone. For me that’s the least bad. I won’t notice it much. Fortunately I never live with a sense of threat. You can’t predict anything in life, and this especially Not. That’s what I would advise everyone: don’t live with fear. You’ll probably die in a very silly way, you’re not doing anyone a favor by worrying about it for years.”
He claps his hands briefly. “But come on, the heart is fine now. There will be a thorough overhaul of the devices in my body in the future, but I will get over that.”
Sunday interview
Every Sunday we publish an interview in text and photos of someone who does or has experienced something special. That can be a major event that the person handles admirably. The Sunday interviews have in common that the story has a major influence on the life of the interviewee.
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2023-07-30 05:58:59
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