In front of many cameras and a lot of press, Mark Gillis was discharged from the Elkerliek hospital in Helmond. The son of Peter Gillis, owner of holiday parks and known from the reality series ‘Massa is Kassa’, was in the hospital for nine weeks with double pneumonia. “It was a close call”, says his father Peter.
“Here he is,” Peter calls out as he walks out of the hospital with Mark in a wheelchair. Mark is allowed to go home after more than two months.
He only found out much later that his condition was so serious. “I knew it wasn’t good of course. My father and family had taken pictures of how I was lying then and looking back at them was not nice. I got quite emotional with my family there,” says Mark.
“He was lucky,” his sister Inge also knows. Because the pneumonia was discovered by chance when he visited his mother, who was in the hospital. An attentive doctor saw that something was wrong with Mark.
“Otherwise he would have been dead in bed.”
“Mark was on his last breath. He wasn’t fit, but he really wanted to go to mom. The doctors said: ‘you don’t look well either’. He was coughing, wheezing all over. The doctors wanted to do a few tests and then he was immediately sent to the emergency room.” Mark (28) owes his life to those attentive doctors, says Inge. Brother Ruud: “Otherwise he would have been dead in bed. I don’t know how else to put it.”
Mark himself also realizes that it was a close call. “I had an angel on my shoulder. I was lucky that I was here at the time.” Mark may have been fired, but he still has to get stronger. For the time being, he is doing that with his father. “Here we go again,” says Peter as he pats Mark encouragingly on the shoulder: “That angel is still here.”
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