Jimmy Ravier
In 2011, Gert-Yan Oskam woke up in a hospital in rural China to find that he couldn’t feel his legs. He was told that he was cycling on his way to the supermarket when he experienced a serious accident that injured his spinal cord, resulting in paralysis to his legs and some of his arms and torso. After being transported to a larger public hospital, he made arrangements to fly home to his native Netherlands where he believed doctors would be able to more effectively treat him.
Oskam was only 28 years old when he was hurt. He was looking forward to recovering and learning to walk again on getting on with big things in his life, like living in the three-story house he built overlooking a river.
“I thought, when I came back home, they would fix me,” Oskam, now 40-years-old, said at a press briefing on Tuesday. “But, unfortunately, there was nothing.”