As an amputee traveling with Klebsiella

Traveling as a triple amputee with Klebsiella pneumoniae, a bacteria that made a 5 X 7 cm hole in my right lung isn't that easy. 

Six times in one year I was in different hospitals, almost for a total of over five months.

That it will kill me one day, as the doctors told me, I understand. A hole in the long in this case can't be closed and since I am always with an infection and being over thin; 40 kilo in weight, - a surgery can't be done.

For me the biggest suffer is that all this made me so weak and thin. My energy is gone, mostly I am very sleepy and it makes me very weak.

Till about two years ago, I easily could crawl from the ground into the wheelchair. Now it is even too difficult to crawl from the bed into the wheelchair. I even remember how easy I could crawl upside on stairs. Those times are over. Even laying hurts me, since it hurt me where my bones are sticking almost outside from being so thin. 

Life as an amputee was indeed easier the time I was healthy and full of energy.

In 3 days my flight to the Philippines over Jeddah. There waiting six hours. Followed by a 10 hours flight to Manila, where I will arrive late evening on day 17. I will need to wait hours on the flight to Puerto Princesa Palawan, since this flight only will be on day 18 in the afternoon.

Being so weak and thin and a body that hurt, even when I sit, I am wondering how that all gonna be...

World Traveler from Belgium

For who don't know me...

The country of chocolat, over 400 beers, Belgian fries and so many comic book series as Tintin and the Smurfs, is where I come from. Yes! Belgium the country where famous comic figures were born. But also I was born there. 

'What have I done wrong in another life', is a question I asked myself already many times. That I was born there, while there are so many nice countries in the world. 

A country so tiny that is split into a French and a Dutch speaking part, but dislikes each other. A country that welcomes Muslim immigrants but meanwhile hate them so much and call them 'makakken'. With other words 'apes'. Brown apes. 

The country with Brussels as capital city of Belgium, but also capital city of Europe. For sure when it comes to politics and European law decisions. 

A king is the ruler, coming from a family that went to colonize Congo. There the king that time, many years ago decided to cut of the hands and sometimes the feet from the people. Cutting hands was the method to punish the black Congolese slaves, let me call it 'workers'. Workers from what some of them ended up in Belgium in the human Zoo, where visitors could watch lively how a Congolese lived and acted. An attraction for the white people, just as a Zoo ape, - as the real 'macaco'.

Another famous thing about Belgium is the 'Mr Pee' statue. A very little statue, located in the heart of Brussels that pees continuous and wear everyday a new uniform.

Since Mr Pee is 400 years old, he deserved a 'girlfriend'. So, since a few years there is now also a Miss Pee', another little statue that enjoy continuously peeing so much as her boyfriend. 

Not to forget that Belgium is also famous for Marc Dutroux, the biggest pedophile on earth, who killed many children after making porn movies with them, from what some of them died from hungry, after being locked up for a long time in the basements of the many houses he had. 

This is Belgium!

But not to forget, Belgium have, - believe it or not, some good and interesting things.

Techno music was founded there and still every year you have Tomorrowland where 400 thousand people comes to see world's famous DJ's. All based from what once started with new beat music, a slower beat then techno that increased in speed and beats by minute and became that time techno.

The new beat period was filled with slightly crazy attitudes. Uniforms and shirts with pictures of death people on. Shoes with iron tips and sounds filled with sexual and drugs oriented songs were in. Mercedes and Volkswagen cars started to lose there stars, being pulled out by new beat fans who used it as uniform decorations, while the proud car owners could see that their nice cars got damaged by this behaviour of stealing the logo on their vehicles. 

But so much drugs got involved that after a short time many Belgian night clubs needed to close their doors. The end of new beat and the techno was born. 

Anyway, that is from where I come and so I decided to live in other countries.

Already over 15 years I am traveling and living in different countries. USA, Brazil, Sri Lanka, Portugal, the Philippines. Places where it is nice warm. Belgium is too cold for me and I feel me home in countries with palm trees, coconut and olive trees.

As a triple amputee without legs and one arm, it sounds more difficult to travel, but the airport help is the best one when it comes to traveling and I anyway like to do things what most people with two legs and two arms mostly don't do.

Living in the dangerous slums from Rio de Janeiro and being for weeks stuck in an airport were a part of that. 

At this moment I am still in Kenya, but in a few days I have my flight back to the Philippines.

The Return to Europe, back in Portugal - to Belgium and back to Portugal... And getting very sick.

It was on July 8, 2021, that I was able to leave the Philippines, but I never came to write about, because I ended up in the hospital. 
Let me start with the beginning...

If you stay long in the Philippines, then you need to pay immigration a lot to leave and if you are longer than six months in the Philippines, then you even need a permit to leave. 
Good that the Belgian Embassy helped with endorsement letters, or I needed to wait weeks every time I wanted an immigration appointment. 
Driving from Embassy to Immigration a few times; It took me anyway more than a month to finally arrange the bunch of documents I needed on July 8 to leave. 
And with the crazy coronavirus, I had changed my ticket already 3 times. 

being back in Portugal during the first days

In the Philippines, I became very sick. That happened already two years ago. Only when I arrived in Europe and ended up in the hospital, they discovered that I have the Klebsiella bacteria. And with me it went into my right lung, what made a hole. 
I first arrived in Portugal, where I was before I went to the Philippines. Lisbon - Cascais. 
With pain in my lung, I ended up in the hospital from Cascais. After weeks of being there, they discovered the bacteria. I started to bleed out of my lung. 
After many antibiotics and a few weeks of hospital, the bleeding stopped and I thought everything would be okay. But No; A few days later it started all over. 

Not knowing what to do, I decided to take the flight to Belgium. There I went to the hospital in the city of Aalst, where they did the whole investigation again. But I needed to stay a whole month, since I got the coronavirus. Yes, in the hospital. 
When I left that hospital I stayed over in an old man's home. Very expensive and in the middle of no were. Then the bleeding in my lung started again and I became sicker than ever before.
A friend of mine told me to go to the university hospital in the city of Leuven. 
Good I did, because if they couldn't help me, then no any hospital could. Well, that was my opinion at that time. 
They promised me that I could stay till it was for sure that the bacteria was gone. But 'No'; After two weeks they asked me to leave because the hospital was overfull and I was okay. That is what they told me. 

on the airplane from Belgium back to Portugal

Back to the old man's place was the only solution. There I stayed two more weeks since I discovered that the boss and his wife had been in jail. I booked immediately a flight to Portugal. This time not to Lisbon, but to the South; The Algarve. 
The flight went from Brussels to Frankfurt in Germany. From there to Faro. 
I always wanted to be in Albufeira, a very nice city over there. I even found a place for rent, but once I arrived, the guy told me that he didn't want to rent to people in a wheelchair. 

It was already late and the neighbor from the house I would rent told me that there was an abandoned house near his place. He gave me the idea to stay over there for the night.
I did and it was very creepy. A house that's for sure ten years without someone living in it. But he was friendly; Installed a kind of bed and a heather. 
The morning after I ended up in Faro in a very cheap guesthouse. On the phone, they told me that it was totally wheelchair accessible. On arrival, it wasn't that way and they told me I only could stay for one night. A room with six bunk beds. Two other people and me. 

the trainstation from Evora, waiting on the train to Lisbon

The morning after the social aid who I did inform called me with the words that an ambulance would pick me up and would bring me to a very wheelchair-friendly hostel in the city of Evora. 
Only at midnight, an ambulance arrived. They told me that they drove from Lisbon to there. And to get in Evora it took them 3 hours.
On arrival, the discovery was totally a sad fact. I really didn't know why they had brought me there. A few stairs; the toilet I couldn't enter and the worst... There was n heather and it was about six degrees celsius. Terrible. 
After one week in this terrible place, I took the train to Lisbon. There a friend came to pick me up at the train station. I stayed ten days with her and tried to find me something for rent.

There really wasn't anything wheelchair accessible. So I started to search for other cities. In Porto, I found a room with a private bathroom and even specially build for wheelchairs to enter. I took the train and left for Porto. 
A very nice place with very friendly people and where I am still till today. But the start was bad. After a few days, I went ill again and ended up calling an ambulance.
I was there for about eight days and signed a paper to leave when my new lung bleeding stopped. What a terrible hospital that was. Such an unfriendly people and what a bad service. I had never seen this in my whole life. I think I can compare it with a kind of hospital about one hundred years ago. I even couldn't go to the comfort room, so they told me to shit in a diaper. Really so disgusting. It even gave me some nightmares afterward. 

a few days before I left the Philippines

Now, being one month later and still being in my little but so nice room I still take antibiotics, but no more lung bleeding (till now). I do hope it stay that way. I am over thin, but I hope it all will become alright one day. I take life day by day and I am very worried about how this illness gonna end up. The klebsiella pneumonia bacteria is very hard to destroy. 

I know I better had left the Philippines before. But the start of the coronavirus kept me away from that possibility. Anyway, this is in a short version of how I returned back to Europe from the Philippines out. 

Is the Philippines wheelchair accessible?

The answer is a big no. So,... NO. 
Before I came to the Philippines, many people from over here told (lied to) me how beautiful their country is and that I would not have any problems with my wheelchair over here.
First of all; Very smart I left my expensive electronic power wheelchair behind in Europe. Just a regular wheelchair over here got broken almost immediately. Streets without house numbers, but also streets without streets, is more then a normal view over here. A neighbor from a nearby 'street' is trying to put some dry long grass over there, but still some 'lakes' shows up after heavy rainfalls. 

The Philippines, well known for their beautiful beaches. Believe me; I have seen them, but only on post cards. On being about 27 months in this Asiatic country, I have seen one beach, but wasn't able to go on it. A dirty spot and the seawater was as being three kilometers away. 
Many times I heard about the beautiful beaches, but wheelchair accessibility is a word that isn't yet in the Tagalog dictionary. 'Brake your neck'; Yes!

Doors are much to small and for sure to bathrooms. Even some fat people would not be able to go inside and many of those doors are even from plastic. I tried as a legless one armed amputee to crawl over floors, just to go to the bathroom, but I gave up on that a long time ago. Floors are mostly dirty and many comfort rooms as they call it over here are a nest of cockroaches and a collection of other bacteria's. 

My solution? Laying on the bed on your stomach with the ass and stumps over board and shitting in a bucket. Disgusting in the beginning, but you get used on such a things. 

A foreigner cleans up a part of a Filipino beach
https://rachfeed.net/foreigner-cleans-up-popular-boulevard-in-southern-philippines/ 

Renting a house, or even many nice and over expensive hotels are not shy to tell you on the phone: "Sorry Sir, but you can not enter with a wheelchair; It isn't accessible". Near that rents are much too expensive; Even in many ways more then Europe. One part of that is for sure when they see your foreigner face over here. Many things rise in price, faster then the sun comes up. And when they see a foreigner in a wheelchair (or an old dying one) then the Filipino instinct goes over into 'money'.
Old foreigners and disabled's as me get off course support from their foreigner country. That is well known over here. 

My honest advice is to stay out of the Philippines, even with 10 arms and legs on your body. 

Amputation on request, devotees and wannabes

Many years ago I discovered the world of devotees and wannabes. A devotee, a wannabe? 

On this planet, there are devotees. The original word for them is acrotomophilia. Coming from the Greek. A devotee or admirer is someone attracted to disabilities and especially to amputees. Worldwide 1 on 500 people is one.

Near that there is the group of wannabes; People who want to become disabled by wish and especially being an amputee. Around 1 on 30.000 people have this attraction. Also coming from the Greek apotemnophilia, or even those days named BIID. 

Many devotees do everything to get in touch with amputees. Many wannabes try to find a surgeon to get rid of the limb or limbs that don't belong to them. 

A few illegal ways right now exist. 

One is Mexico where a surgeon asks $ 20.000 for each limb and then we have the 'promotion' in the Philippines what is 50 procent cheaper and $ 10.000 for removing a limb.

Many wannabes don't have that amount and try it in their own way. Many tried and did it with dry ice or even with injecting local anaesthetics, to do it by themselves. 

For sure the most famous wannabe was George Boyer who shot in his own leg and came out for it. He lived in Florida, USA.

Then there was the case John Ronald Brown, a surgeon who performed an illegal amputation on a 79 yo wannabe patient, named Philip Bondy. The morning after surgery, Bondy was found dead at the hotel. The body was found by Dr. Gregg M. Furth, a psychologist and also a wannabe.

Not to forget the case of Dr Smith in Scotland who performed some amputations on wannabes. Smith worked together with the documentary Horizon from the BBC and 2 psychiatrists who screened first the wannabes. 

My book Amputation on request about those subjects are available at lulu, amazon, Barnes and Noble,...

There is an A5, pocket and eBook version.

Maybe for the amputee who did became one in a normal way, it will be pretty hard to understand why a devotee find them attractive, or why someone want to be as you. More and more and during many years of investigation, the phenomenon became more in the daylight. 

Some wannabes compare it with transgenders and the feeling of being not complete in the actual body. 

God, give me a call,... If you exist

Even as an amputee you can be very religious. At least, what I was as a two legged child. 

My grandmother told me that God really existed so I went with her to the churches and even went there every day, when I started to serve the church as a priest helper and even started to sing for them. 

There came even a day that in the weekends I went over to the sisters and helped to work in their garden.

When I asked a day to the priest or God exist and how he knows he became very upset and told me: 'Or you believe or not'

I stopped church and discovered that watching old black and white movies are far more interesting then church visits. 

Life went on till my sister killed herself 14 days after my brother died from cancer.

Where was God now? My whole family gone, dead... On a few years only. Mother, father, uncle, all... 

When I traveled to Brazil and have seen a child around the age of 7, dead on a piece of carton, it was clear for me that there is no God. 

Good that there exist science and not a fairytale book wherein a creature open the sea and then saying that God allowed that his son was nailed on the cross.

Nice father. Daddy can not find a free woman and decided to grab Mary who wasn't single. I have two children but I will not nail them. 

Amazing dumb is what people can be to believe in this all. Did they have seen God or one of his family members? 

Jesus the survivor of the world? He was married with the prostitute Maria Magdalena and had two children; And that is real proven history. 

The church, cathedral's worldwide filled with gold, but meanwhile millions of people die from hungry. If there is a God, he don't need gold and ornaments.

If the real creator exist and his son is the survivor... Why millions suffer right now thanks to a Corona virus? And that is only one example of this planets suffers. 

And do we forget the holly inquisition? 

As an amputee even living in the slumber of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, -I helped about 10 street children daily. Even that my girlfriend told me that I couldn't safe the whole planet. 

My answer was that it is better to help 10 instead of no one and better then a God that prefer to let them die from hungry.

How many times don't we hear about the many pedophile priests as in Belgium, or even corrupt priests in my city of birth that recently kept thousands of Euro's behind.

I prefer to believe in reality and the things you see and have proofs of existence.

We can believe in everything we want. Even the Aliens came to earth. Freedom of religion and speech. I keep it with my religion and that is no religion. 

An amputee around the world

As an amputee without legs and one arm I found it amazing to 'provocate' myself, to say it in that way, -or should I need to say: Discovering how far I can go as a half person?

My first travel was to Brazil and I ended up in a paradise called Santos in the state of Sao Paulo. That was years ago, but by still renting an apartment in Belgium; My country of origin, I wasn't in the possibility to stay financially.

My second travel was a friend from USA Florida who invited me. Once in America for a vacation of 3 weeks and after the big discovery how wheelchair it is over there, I decided to go through the whole process of immigration and staid for two years.

After that I discovered for a short time Sri Lanka to end up for many years in Brazil.

When I was once over there without money, a blocked bank card and staying 14 days on the airport sleeping at the terminal, was in one way a goosebump, realizing that not everyone without legs do those things. At that time there was no any fun about it. Afterwards I had a good feeling that I did it. 

After Brazil I decided to try out Portugal, where I was for 2 years. 

I missed speaking so much Portuguese and I guess that was the main reason why I was ready for Portugal

Right now I am in the Philippines, but that is another long story.

I published a book about it and it is called 'Around the world without legs and one arm'. 

Available at lulu, amazon, barnes and nobles, ...

It is the story from since I left Europe, till my return there. I guess a book good to push people with a disability in the direction of doing more with your life and showing yourself and others that you can do everything and that being like me is not an excuse to get out of the door and do some things that you and others thought it wasn't able to do. 

Being an amputee isn't so bad as some people think. Stay thinking positively is the message.