Therapy & Practice

Back to the future

At the age of just 19, Hannes’ life as he had known it was literally thrown off course. The athletic young man from Oberschwaben started up his motorbike in July 2021 and then, in just the blink of an eye, found himself waking up after spending more than two weeks in a coma in the intensive care unit. Without any kind of memory of what had happened.

Hannes described waking up as indescribably frightening and absolutely surreal. He felt like he was awake and in a nightmare at the same time. Several days passed before he realised that he was in the intensive care unit of the Kliniken Schmieder in Allensbach. The bitter diagnosis: crushed lungs, splintered cervical vertebrae, fractured thoracic vertebrae and femurs, pneumonia and artificial feeding. It was his family who told him about the motorbike accident and that he had been brought to the University Hospital of Ulm by helicopter. He must have skidded out of the bend.

After Hannes was able to move from the intensive care unit to the normal ward, he had another stay at Klinikum Singen and then arrived at out-patient rehabilitation in the Schlossklinik in Bad Buchau in December.

There, while still severely weakened and in extreme pain, he started his first exercises in September/October 2021, such as sitting at the edge of the bed or standing up with the help of a therapist. At that time, Hannes had been in the middle of his vocational training, was a passionate football and tennis player, and spent a lot of time out and about with his friends. And now he was practising how to sit. Despite everything, he did not lose heart, in part thanks to his family who stuck by him on this tough journey at all times.

After he was able to sit and take his first cautious steps using a walking frame, Hannes began training with the THERA-Trainer lyra, an end-effector gait trainer for intense training at performance limits which imitates the human gait pattern perfectly. The lyra enables patients to make up to 20 times as many repetitions as treadmill-based or manual gait training.

And the extreme efforts paid off. Hannes quickly made progress, experiencing less pain and able to walk for longer after every session with the THERA-Trainer lyra. He gradually fought his way “back to the future”. When our THERA-Trainer team met Hannes at the end of January 2022 during out-patient rehabilitation (still 5 days a week) at the Schlossklinik in Bad Buchau, the now 20-year-old was already walking 4 to 5 km a day! His endless discipline and the optimal treatment by all the medical professionals in the clinics he went through all contributed to this success.

Hannes is able to continue his vocational training. Driving, working out and tennis are also back on the daily agenda once again. He even no longer has to take medication. But he never wants to ride a motorbike again.

Daniel Heß