The diagnose
Femke Krijger: “‘I have bad news for you,’ the ophthalmologist had said. We sat down. In a few crystal-clear sentences, he told us that I have a chronic disease, that I was visually impaired and that this would get worse, that my hearing impairment was also related to this and most likely like my vision was slowly decreasing. They had no idea what was causing this, let alone how to stop or cure this process. He was very sorry for us, but could don’t do anything for us anymore and wished us strength. Within two minutes we were outside again.”
“Basically I just lived on. Got a fairly normal student life. I met my husband, we moved in together, I got a job as a lawyer, I got married. When I had just had a child and wanted to go back to work, I turned out to be like this tired that I couldn’t do it anymore and to my great frustration I was declared incapacitated for work. I was at home, depressed and had a small child. I had the feeling that I was slowly disappearing.”
Positive
In her book, Femke describes that at a certain point she realizes that she should not only focus on her shortcomings, but on what can be gained.
“During rehabilitation it was only about compensating for what I could no longer do. But I wanted to see what I could do. At a certain point I read a book about dealing with energy. I also started to delve into Tai chi massage .”
“Now I have such a richness in my senses, I play with my senses. I have followed the training as a tai chi masseur. When I give a massage, it is such a finely tuned feeling. Tension can I feel, temperature, stiff, cold, tense. I have a kind of conversation with the person without words. Really a blessing: this is connection for me.”
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