Years later, Remko recovered from his chronic muscle disease.

The couple is happy when they find out they are having a girl, but the baby and new job also cause stress. “I noticed that I was very tired and couldn’t get out of bed in the morning,” Remko says, recalling that period. They decided to take a week off to rest. The vacation is off to a great start. ”But some strange things happened. For example, I found the sun very bright and I couldn’t do without my sunglasses. While eating, I tried to bite the cucumber and tomato, but I couldn’t. I thought: What’s wrong with me?'” Remko says skeptically.

“This was something that really shocked me.”

Remko notices that he is losing strength in his entire body, but he wants to continue to enjoy the holiday. The next day the couple went to the top of the mountain on their scooter. But suddenly I was lying on the ground after we had been down for a while. This was something that really shocked me.” The hospital was called and as Remko waited alone in his hotel room, he felt his arms and legs slowly stop working. There is a thought in his mind that he might die. “I will leave my six-month-old daughter without a father.”

Then the complaints get worse and worse. “It took me half an hour to get from bed to the toilet,” Remko says. What is happening with the young man is a mystery to the doctors. He was transferred to the Netherlands. There, Remko undergoes endless tests and the results are not good: he suffers from a chronic muscle disease and has to live on medication in the hope that it will not get worse than it is now. ”I was shocked. Suddenly a movie appears before your eyes that you will spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair and you will not be able to do anything anymore.”

It’s no coincidence

His father-in-law gives him a book as support. ”At one point in this book, it’s about a boy suffering from the same illness. My father-in-law knew nothing about this, so it couldn’t have been a coincidence for me, Remko points out. Later in the book the boy is healed. Remko accepts this as God’s word for his condition. He says to himself: “I won’t heal right away, but I will heal.”

Remko is released from the hospital, but a difficult period follows during which he cannot do anything except walk a little. Two years later, he tries to train again with a colleague. They met several times and Remko slowly felt his strength returning. “I was able to do more and more, and at one point I could bench press a hundred kilograms,” says Remko. He goes for a medical examination to the neurologist and explains what happened. “He thought it was a miracle and said I could stop taking my pills. I was cured.”