WONDERFUL. Matthias Beyer on board with me

It's been 12 hours, but there are still tears in my eyes.

My good friend Matthias Beyer visited my boat yesterday evening together with his father-in-law.

The special thing: At Easter 2015, Matthias was dying after an extremely severe stroke - the doctor had never seen such a large aneurysm before. The doctors had given up on him. It was only a question of when the life-support machines would be switched off.

For over a week, his cerebrum sent no signals that could have been measured on an EEG. Only the brain stem still showed mild activity.

And then - surprisingly, shockingly, delightfully - Matthias woke up again and regained consciousness. In my blog post The second best Easter ever I told you the details.

A man told me yesterday that his wife, who describes herself as a „non-believer“, said afterwards: „What happened to Matthias challenges my unbelief!“

And - contrary to all medical prognoses - he recovered visibly and regained abilities that doctors would not have thought possible.

• Standing, walking with a stick, walking independently.
• Understanding something, speaking words, speaking sentences.

Yesterday, he spent four hours talking to different people. Asked how they were doing. And told them how he was doing.

He said: „I'm not completely healthy yet. Somewhere in the middle. I can't work yet (note that still in the sentence!). But I can speak a lot more than others. I am grateful. I'm alive!“

His condition now

• He can walk, but the right side is still restricted, I don't know what it's called medically, but it looks like spasticity, fingers and legs are not so easy to bend and coordinate.
• He can speak and is easy to understand 98% of the time...German is easier for him than English. Sometimes he speaks slightly „mumbling“...no comparison to a year ago, when I sometimes had to ask him to repeat himself 10 times before I could understand him.
• His eyes are focussing better. Immediately after the stroke, he saw everything x-fold. This reduced to 6, 5, 4, 3 - now he sees things twice, which is of course very tiring. Reading and writing are still not or hardly possible.
• He realises and understands things much better, complex things or jokes are still difficult. When we toasted my ship and his father-in-law said: „Don't drink too much or I'll get into trouble with two women!“ he didn't understand. When I explained it more simply, he did understand: „If you drink too much, (your wife) Kim and (your mother-in-law) Jody will be mad at David for not taking good care of you!“
• He is present and reacts - quite different from last year in December, when he often stared ahead...

„I am so grateful... “

Matthias said this sentence a few dozen times yesterday.

I am also sooo grateful

• That he is alive
• That the restrictions are far less severe than expected
• That his brain and also his soul (he was often depressed in the spring) are increasingly recovering.
• That we could marvel at my ship together.

Please continue to pray for him 

• That the right side of the body becomes fully functional again
• That his brain continues to recover quickly and understanding and memory increase
• That his eyes will soon see clearly