A paralyzed man’s Paradise > What Mihai Neşu’s world might look like 10 years from now (part 1)

Unfortunately, there is no train going to Ridderkerk. The Knights’ Cathedral’s Town is situated 10 kilometres away from Rotterdam, in southern Holland. Here, close to 50,000 people live on 25 square kilometres, in neighbourhoods made up of houses symmetrically demarked. Out of these 25 square kilometres, 2 are made up of water! Erwin’s street has a name impossible to pronounce. It comes from rekarreks, a dialect spoken in the province, even more complicated than Dutch. Yes, there is such a thing as a language more complicated than Dutch.

When he was a student of only 19 years of age, Erwin Hout had an accident quite similar to the one suffered by Mihai Neşu. Completely paralyzed, he graduated, made his way up within a Dutch company in an astonishing way, got married and has three wonderful little girls. He is 38 today and says that he’s the happiest man in his Paradise, trapped in a wheelchair.

He met Mihai Neşu last fall, when the specialists from the De Hoogstraat Clinic, starting point for both Erwin and Mihai, advised the Romanian to visit him in Ridderkerk in order to see how many possibilities are available to a man who cannot use his arms and legs.

Neşu’s life in the near future seems to be designed according to the following pattern: love from the people around him, inventions which make his daily activities easier, the wait for a miracle and patience with his body. The Houts’ home is a world in itself. We turned around it for a few hours, like some clumsy mice in a kingdom of fair-headed children and mind-blowing technology which make up the world of an accomplished paralyzed man.

“I showed Mihai how he can adjust the world around him to his particular situation. But it takes more: it takes people who will help you without any superfluous tenderness and who don’t deprive you of your independence. And it takes faith” (Erwin Hout)

“The most difficult part is to understand that you are the way you are. But this thought will always come back to you, taking the shape of different challenges, throughout your entire life. Mihai Neşu will win if he surpasses these steps, one by one” (Erwin Hout)

FROM 65% TO 200%

Erwin Hout’s suffering and strength draw a white window on a Dutch house with a garden and an immense living-room, through which happiness often passes, making its presence felt with tangible steps. A decade separates Erwin and Mihai, but this distance is erased by their common way of life.

“Hout”. Golden capital letters on a brown door. To the left, a window as big as the entire wall. An overflowing transparency to us; but the Dutch people persuade every drop of sunlight to enter their house. The doorbell rings in an ordinary tone. Then ensue a muffled creak, two or three metallic cracks. The white living-room, the large sofas, a wooden table, beyond the window. Suddenly, the knees of a man sitting in a wheelchair come into view. Then his head, with piercing-blue eyes.

He smiles. The door cracks twice, like the intercoms in the Bucharest buildings, and opens widely, to the maximum. We enter the house clumsily, we say hello, we make small talk in English, exchanging polite words. Cristi wants to close the door, but Erwin stops him: “I’ll close it later. Let the light enter the house for a little while.”

Places designed for happiness

“How do you like the area?” our host asks us suddenly, while he turns around adeptly with his wheelchair and stops 30 centimetres away from the armchairs in which we are seated. We had woken up at 4 o’clock in the morning, left the Bucharest neighbourhoods of Militari and Apărătorii Patriei at dawn, so we remain speechless: a few lakes, a lot of green, buildings broken off a Lego game, moisture. Nothing special compared to Utrecht or any other place from around here.

Erwin comes to our rescue: “I love this area! I was born here; this is where my parents live, too. The accident also happened here; but this is where I work and I’m extremely happy!” Heaven isn’t here, Mihai Neşu said. “I’m not exaggerating, not a single bit”, Erwin says, as if replying, in a dialogue seemingly taking place in his head, to his fellow in suffering. “And I’ll tell you everything”.

30 cm of water and bad luck

He was a student in Business Administration; he had just finished his first year in college. He spent the summer holiday with his friends, his two brothers and two sisters. “A regular Catholic family”, he explains. One morning, he was riding his bike. By a lake, obviously. “A girl splashed water at me, fooling around. I got off my bike, we wrestled a bit, and I wanted to push her in the lake. But I slipped instead.” He smiles, remembering an ordinary kids play.

“I plunged head forward. There were only 30 centimetres of water, and stones beneath that.” Cervical fracture. C5-C6, two vertebrae lower than in Mihai Neşu’s case. Complete paralysis. The spine’s nerves were severely damaged. “In my case, the diagnosis was very easy to establish. But it was hard to understand, because I was only 19 years old.”

One year to lift the right hand

“Let me close the door, it’s getting cold.” We hadn’t even noticed. We stumble dizzily out of the story, while the ruddy-cheeked man stretches out the back of his hand and pushes a button on the right side of the wheelchair. The door closes. We only notice it now: starting from the wrists, his palms are twisted, rolled up like some whitish shirt. And his fingers, wrapped around in a band, look exactly like the fists of a boxer who has retired after several decades spent in the ring and who still puts on his gear on Saturday afternoons to relive the victory frenzy.

“I spent three weeks in the teaching hospital in Rotterdam, and then I was transferred to De Hoogstraat, the recovery clinic in Utrecht where Mihai was admitted as well. I stayed there for 14 months!” he goes on, undisturbed. “It was only 4 months after the accident that I could feel a muscle throbbing, and after another 8 months was I able to lift my right hand.”

“I’m good, but I have a small problem”

When he left the clinic, he had turned 20. His house had already been adjusted to his new lifestyle; even his parents’ house had acquired an extension, a small apartment just for him, modified as well. But this didn’t mean much to Erwin: “It didn’t cross my mind, not even for one second, that I would go on living like that, simply counting the days! I went on with my studies; it took me five years, instead of three, but I did it”.

And he didn’t get his degree in Business Administration to stroke his ego or because he was bored. “I wrote a letter to a local company from Ridderkerk, with about 200 employees. I wanted to use my degree in an efficient way and I aimed high. I told them: I’m good at what I do, I’m ready, but... I have a small problem!” Erwin roars with laughter, awakening in us, under the unflinching armour of determination, a first smile. Outside, it has started to rain, hastily. We turn our eyes toward the incredibly green garden. But the man makes us return to his story, in a tempestuous way: “I asked them if they wanted us to meet and discuss it, as I was willing to go to their headquarters!”

His independence, from 65 to 200%

That same day, in the summer of 2001, Erwin was hired. In Holland, the regular working week is 40 hours long. He was working, as he adds, in his financier words, “only 24 hours a week, that is 65% of my full capacity”. And he didn’t feel completely accomplished either: he was a PR coordinator.

“Two years later, in 2003, I was working 30 hours a week, which represented 75% of the regular schedule. And, apparently, I was efficient!” He was offered the E-marketing Manager position, which was closer to his qualification, and he accepted. Two more years later, in 2005, he became the General Manager of the Marketing Department, working 40 hours a week, like any other Dutch person.

Perplexed, I write down the percentages and the phases of an evolution difficult to connect in my mind with the wheelchair in which the narrator’s voice is nestled. Thank God we are down to 100%! “And, in 2008, I became one of the directors; I’m the Marketing Director now. I function at about... 200% of my capacity.”

The financial crisis and a urine bag

The company where Erwin is one of the top managers provides audio-visual installations, equipments and solutions for conferences and other events. The completely paralyzed man gesticulates, contorting both his arms and explaining how he has advanced in a position where he makes several thousands euro a month: “My colleagues at work have made a tremendous difference: they feed me my lunch, they help me get dressed when I leave. But the essential thing is that I reinforced the limits of my independence: I kept the world real, extremely real, a world where I work on my own, I create, I make money, I innovate, I am useful.”

There’s a rustling sound. “Excuse me!” Erwin says, laughing his heart out. We lower our eyes to the carpet: a huge plastic ball came out our host’s socks. “It’s the urine bag: it got filled up while we were talking. My wife will change it when she gets home. Let’s move on. The company’s turnover, given the financial crisis...”

Their way of being strong together

The businessman’s exposé about the shrinking economy didn’t last long. A tall woman, with big, clear eyes, enters the hallway, carrying two plastic bags. “Marleen, my wife.” After the usual polite smile exchange, she surges in the living room with biscuits and two coffees, and then takes a seat on the couch, to Erwin’s left, with a tea cup and a straw firmly pointed toward him. She put an end to his financial speech. She annihilated him, with her gentle, but authoritative entrance.

“Before the tea, empty the urine bag, please”, the man remembers. The woman is a physician, a geriatrician, so she’s used to it. Besides, they have been married since 2003, therefore she has acquired an astonishing dexterity. She changes the bag and is about to sit down again on the couch. She looks down. She forgot something. The man’s right leg is hanging besides the wheelchair, following the operation she has just performed.

Normally, a loving scene would ensue, where Marleen would get down on her knees and take her husband’s inert sole in her palms, lifting it gently and placing his rigid ankle on the rubber footrest. But no. The woman puts the tip of her shoe beneath Erwin’s disobedient foot and lifts it, with a natural movement, placing it in its right place on the wheelchair. Ho-pa! “Erwin, have you showed them your supercomputer?”

“A click means standing still for 0.3 seconds”

Erwin’s computer looks like a regular one. But it has, to the left, a keyboard on a rectangular panel. A miniature crane arm rises on the left side of the chair, carrying a pair of glasses. “They have no lenses, you’ll see. Besides, my eyesight is working very well, I wouldn’t need them anyway” Erwin jokes. “Yeah, that’s about the only thing that’s still working.” We freeze. Marleen said that. And they both laugh.

From above the special glasses starts a laser wave which projects itself on the keyboard on the left side of the monitor. Erwin moves his head, the glasses remain on his nose, the red dot is moving around on the keyboard. “A click means remaining still on a key for 0.3 seconds. At first, I had set it at 2 seconds, but I gained speed in the meantime.” This is how he writes e-mails, reads Psalms and accesses Gazeta’s website, to see what it looks like: “All I understand is the word sport” J

The elevator to the Paradise upstairs

Somebody knocks on the door leading from the living-room into the garden. A blonde peewee with glasses, the kind of little girl who is cast in every single TV ad for milk, life insurance, chocolate, story-books. In every single TV ad. “Aah, there’s my daughter, Hannah, she’s 7!” Erwin beams, while he opens the door using the button from his wheelchair. She’s 7, so she’s born after the accident... maybe she’s the wife’s daughter from another marriage. Except that she looks a lot like Erwin. “And we have two other daughters, they’re twins, 5 years old; they’re out playing, they’ll be in later.”

Hannah is not at all shy; we say hello and she starts jabbering something in Dutch, with a serious face. Through the rattling of the language, impossible to understand, the word “Daddy” makes its way a few times, uttered in a playful tone. “She wants to be the one to show you the elevator leading to the house’s upstairs paradise” Erwin translates. And the kid pushes a button on the white wall, which opens up, by magic. Hannah laughs heartily at our stupid astonishment. She takes my hand, showing me the way to the Paradise upstairs.

HERE YOU CAN READ THE SECOND PART OF THE STORY