class=”sc-cffd1e67-0 iQNQmc”>
He imagined a different end to his career, “that at my last match my wife and daughter would be sitting in the stands at that moment and would be there,” reveals Benjamin Neukom (32). Instead, the forward is pulled from hockey in the middle of a game, out of a season, and has had to give up his desire to make a comeback due to the severity of the eye injury.
Flashback: November 5, 2022 – in the starting third part of the duel between Olten and Visp, a fatal scene in a duel is staged. Neukom gets a Visper’s stick in his face. The stick kick hits him directly in the left eye. The diagnosis later at the Aarau eye clinic is bitter: almost the entire iris – known to us as the iris – has been torn off.
After the necessary operation, Neukom was still unsure when he first spoke about the tragedy. At that time, there is no exact prognosis as to whether vision will return. “I had the hope that I would one day return to the ice,” recalls the rapper from Rapperswil. But it is destroyed two weeks before Christmas. The specialists tell the hockey professional that there will be no more extreme improvements.
The eyeball is filled with oil
Neukom falls into a chaos of emotions. Just a few days later, his wife Natacha (31) tells him she is pregnant. Looking back, Neukom realizes that this happy news and the birth of his daughter in September 2023 probably saved him from a worse mental crash. Being a father gives him strength, even though he sometimes struggles with fate.
Because in addition to the new family happiness, the injured eye continues to cause problems. He has to go to the eye clinic regularly, for check-ups or for injections in his eye. The largest operation is planned for the summer of 2023, which was previously attempted to be prevented with smaller interventions. “The lens had to be replaced,” Neukom explains. Currently, his eyeball is filled with oil to weigh down the retina so it doesn’t detach. “Everything is stable at the moment, but that could change again quickly.”
At the same time, he is confronted with the lengthy process with the insurance companies and the question of what career he can envision for the future. He seeks help from a career advisor for this. Because Neukom cannot return to his skilled profession as a bricklayer due to his visual impairment.
The former striker was not allowed to drive for the first four months after the accident and was also plagued by headaches. But at some point the brain compensates for the lack of 3D vision in one eye, and Neukom is able to get behind the wheel again after appropriate tests. Today, fifteen months later, he describes: “My vision in my left eye is very milky and blurry. This is especially difficult in clear and sunny weather.” He only has eight percent of his vision left. And the love for hockey. Yet Neukom only managed to watch a game of the Lakers, his parent club, for the first time on Saturday. “A lot of emotions came up.”
Source : Blick
I’m Emma Jack, a news website author at 24 News Reporters. I have been in the industry for over five years and it has been an incredible journey so far. I specialize in sports reporting and am highly knowledgeable about the latest trends and developments in this field.
