“I had a car accident in Curaçao eight years ago”, says Thomas who lived on the island at the time. “I was driving back home at night, as I always do. Before I know it, someone shoots behind me and he wants the car. He kept pushing and screaming behind me and I just kept driving, then hard again soft. Then he drove next to me and pushed me off the road. I got into a drainage channel. ” Thomas flew through his windshield. “My lungs were broken, my head was open. Fluid behind my lungs and collapsed lungs,” he sums up. “And my back was broken. Then you lie there in the hospital, 7000 kilometers from home. Then you wake up and your legs don’t work anymore.”
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Thomas soon found out that he could no longer walk. “You just miss your feeling. Then you always hope that it will be okay. Two days later the rehabilitation doctor comes and says: ‘Thomas, just assume that you can never walk again.” And I found that very difficult. That message still touches me. “
He was a sporty boy, but Thomas had to give up all that. “It was very confronting, because I could do everything with a snowboard. But that was no longer possible.” Jamai wants to give him a similar experience again. He wants Thomas to go paragliding. “I never thought this was something I could do,” he says. But it does not happen automatically, because training is required. That doesn’t go smoothly, as you can see below.
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After Thomas first makes a test flight, he then has to do it alone. To give him a helping hand, Jamai goes after him. After the test flight Thomas is in for a big surprise, namely his girlfriend Leontine. Then it is time for Thomas to make the flight completely solo. “What a kick, how crazy”, he exclaims.
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