Henk de Jong looks back on an eventful 2023. The trainer was operated on in March to remove a cyst of twenty millimeters in diameter in his brain. He has now fully recovered and is once again a trainer of his beloved Cambuur.
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When De Jong is in conversation with the NOS Thinking back to last year, he still fills up for a moment. Talking about that period, which he says he has ‘hidden deeply’, is harder than he suspected. “If the operation went wrong, I only wanted one thing: that I had not whined. That I had not been annoying to anyone.”
Since the end of 2021, the football man has been struggling with ‘inexplicable complaints’: double vision, no feeling in his nose, repetitive behavior and being disoriented. By his own account, he spent 21 hours a day in bed. “The rest of the time I was there and at the same time I wasn’t there. Really, I had no life.” Ultimately, a cyst in his brain turned out to be the cause of his complaints. It was surgically removed in the spring with a risky procedure.
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De Jong was never afraid of death, although he did think about what life would be like for his wife and children. “But I wanted to live so badly again that I hardly thought about death. I was never nervous about that operation.” Just before the procedure, De Jong had a nice chat about Cambuur with the surgeon on duty. “Then I said to him: let’s go! That’s how I got into it.”
And now? “I enjoy it every day. Next year I will be sixty, I don’t have that much time anymore. I hope to last as long as I can. I am back on the field with the boys and also support fellow sufferers who have the same problem. camps. You know, I have the best life there is. Even this weather can’t ruin my good mood. It may sound strange, but in a way that illness has been an enrichment for me.”
2023-12-24 07:02:21
#wanted #live #thought #death
