Neurosurgeon doubts Schumacher saw daughter's wedding

Oct.7 (GMM) A leading neurosurgeon has pushed back on claims that Michael Schumacher was very likely present for the recent wedding of his daughter Gina-Maria.

The speculation ramped up because Gina chose the family vacation home in Mallorca as the scene of her nuptials, where her father, now 55, is rumoured to spend most of his time in the wake of his 2013 brain injuries.

However, Jussi Posti, in charge of neurosurgery and traumatic brain injury at Turku University Hospital in Finland doubts the great German was well enough to witness his daughter say ‘I do’.

“If a personal home hospital has been built around him, it sounds like he has mostly been an inpatient,” he told Iltalehti newspaper.

“Based on the available information, I don’t think he leads a very active life. Everything points to the fact that he is in bad shape.

“As a bed patient, most people become so fragile and stiff that being lifted out of bed is no longer possible after so many years,” Posti added.

He admitted he has no inside information about Schumacher’s condition, but the fact that almost nobody else knows anything except for a very close circle of family and friends is telling.

“It suggests that he has probably been in the same condition for the last decade,” said Posti. “I doubt anything sudden has changed at this stage.

“Typically, patients recover what they can recover for up to two years, and then the level of recovery is usually set.”

Some hold out hope that advanced technological methods may lead to improvements in Schumacher’s condition, but Posti doubts that as well.

“Essentially, these type of patients are very experimental models at best,” he said.

Posti says he has heard that the seven time world champion can only communicate with his eyes.

“There are various after-effects of brain damage,” he explained. “For example, the injury can cause the patient to be unwilling to communicate with anyone other than the immediate family.

“It may also be that no one other than the immediate family can get the patient sufficiently stimulated for any meaningful communication.”