When he wakes up the next day in the hospital, she is standing next to him:
– It was a very special moment, because even though I had not fully understood what was going on, I was well aware that I had moved on a knife edge.
– The first thing I said to her was:
– You saved my life. I was unbelievably lucky.
Lucky to be alive at all, but also lucky to have Marie by her side throughout the course.
– She was amazing. She went into soldier fashion, he tells the magazine.
This is the first time the couple tells what happened that summer evening when they and their two children, Henrik and Athena, were at dinner with Prince Joachim’s cousin five minutes drive from the Queen’s castle, Chateau de Cayx.
During dinner, Princess Marie quickly notices that something is wrong with Prince Joachim’s way of speaking.
– I can hear him kind of rubbish. And when you know my husband and know how he speaks and formulates himself, then you know that it is completely unusual.
– I knew right away that there was something seriously wrong with his brain. I could see his facial paralysis. It was – it was very, very awful. These are images that are forever in my head, she says.
The ambulance first drives the prince to the nearby hospital in Cahors, but it does not have the capacity to treat him, so he is transferred to a major in Toulouse.
Here the doctors perform a so-called thrombectomy, in which the 13 millimeter long blood clot is pulled out.
– It was so close to a tragedy that could have changed our lives forever. We are very grateful to be together today, says Princess Marie.
Along the way, she is most of all afraid of losing him as a person, while his physical paralysis worries her less.
– It was important to save his brain. His ability to speak and think, she says.
Today, the couple’s everyday life is back in Paris, where Prince Joachim works as a defense attachรฉ at the Danish embassy.
He has no injuries from the accident, but there have been many thoughts and some of them are recurring, he says.
– There are things from childhood, youth and experiences that come back in a new light, because it has now settled down in a different way.
Initially, the plan is for Prince Joachim to be defense attachรฉ for three years. With the possibility of extension.
Source: The Nordic Page