Family of former world champion given grim news.
The family of Michael Schumacher have been told to prepare for the worst possible news.
Doctors and other experts in the brain injury field have told Michael Schumacher’s wife Corrina and others that “only a miracle” can save him now.
The seven-time world champion has been placed under a medically induced coma since suffering a skiing accident with his family at the French resort of Meribel on December 29 last year.
Schumacher was rushed to Grenoble University Hospital where he has been in the medical for the past 70 days.
However, a source close to the family, said they have been his chances of a full recovery are very low at this late stage after the accident.
“The family has been told that only a miracle can bring him back now,” a senior German journalist said.
“He is in a bad way but until the family issues a formal statement, we cannot publish anything,” he added.
Another source said: “Doctors have given it to them straight. Miracles sometimes happen but there is little hope that he will come out of this.”
Neurologists have twice operated on Schumacher to alleviate swelling inside of his skull and to remove blood clots formed after the impact with the right side of his head against the rock.
The medical team hoped that there would be signs Schumacher would start to be become aware of his surroundings via eye fluttering and his fingers moving, that can not be put down to a nerve twitching.
Schumacher’s manager Sabine Kehm has issued several statements saying the former Ferrari driver is still in his ‘wake-up phase’, where doctors lessen the drugs that are keeping him in the coma.
However, it appears the family are being told something closer to the reality of Schumacher’s condition.
They talked and talked and prayed for him to acknowledge their presence. But he remains comatose with tubes feeding him, supplying him with air, giving him medicine and removing waste from his body,” a source close to the family reportedly said.
‘Miracles happen, of course, and as a wealthy man he has the best care money can buy. But all the money in the world cannot fix what has happened to him.”’
Experts said that the greatest risk of all facing Schumacher in his prone position is pneumonia.
The lack of a competent swallowing mechanism can make saliva run into the lungs and trigger the potentially lethal respiratory infection.
He has already had — and conquered — one lung infection.
Schumacher’s blood is also thinned to prevent thrombosis and he is regularly turned and even stood straight up at times to keep it flowing.
He lies on a special air-filled mattress to prevent pressure sores and his urinary tract is under constant vigilance because of the danger of waste bacteria entering the bloodstream and causing a potentially fatal infection.
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