Mike Glemser is lying on his couch in a black hooded sweatshirt from the German Ice Hockey Association and is exhausted. The 26-year-old striker has just completed his rehab and needs to recover from the tough session. “Just as life has become more difficult in general, rehab is also incredibly strenuous, simply because the body is not really fit,” says the former Starbulls Rosenheim player, who now lives in Pforzheim near his rehabilitation clinic.
Glemser is paraplegic. His accident was almost a year ago now. On February 3, 2023, in the league game between his Starbulls and SC Riessersee, he crashed head first into the boards after a duel. If the situation were not so serious, it could be described as unfortunate.
Glemser needs first aid on the ice. He was in an artificial coma for around ten days in the BG accident clinic in Murnau/Bavaria. He has to stay there for months and initially has to be artificially ventilated. He learns to breathe again. At the same time, he does physical and occupational therapy, massages and current therapy, in which nerves and muscles are stimulated with electricity. His body must be mobilized so that muscles and joints do not atrophy and stiffen.
As it turns out, the Stuttgart native has broken his fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae. Glemser is described as a quadriplegic; he can no longer move his arms and legs. “February 3rd is actually a normal day, but for me it’s been a shit day since last year,” he says. He was allowed to leave the hospital in September 2023 and moved to Pforzheim with his girlfriend Lara Lindmayer, and into a barrier-free apartment from October.
“Where are you?” Glemser answers: “At zero”
Since then, for Glemser, there has been a time before the “shit day” and a time after the “shit day”. The time before that represents health, a business degree, normality. The time afterwards means the loss of almost 25 kilograms of body mass, 24-hour care, and dependency. “So little, almost nothing at all works for me. You can hardly do anything independently to improve the situation, you are always dependent on someone else,” says Glemser and admits: “The question ‘Why me?’ comes more often in the bad moments.”
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How are you supposed to find an answer to that? You can just as easily ask whether you can accept, after just a year, if your former life of full independence is taken away from you? “I think you’re still a long way from that. Where are you?” asks his friend Lara, who sits next to him on the couch and is always there for him, which in his case is not an empty phrase at all. “At zero,” replies Glemser.
Glemser with his girlfriend Lara Lindmayer
Source: picture alliance/dpa/Bernd Weißbrod
“It still takes time to accept the situation as it is,” says Lindmayer. “Only when you have processed it in your head can things go uphill mentally.” Glemser cannot yet apply the progress that he is undoubtedly making in everyday life, such as lifting a cup or using the cell phone. He moves with an electric wheelchair, which he controls with his right arm. Showering takes up to two hours with help. That’s frustrating. “It’s going too slow for me,” says Glemser – and laughs.
His neck and shoulders hurt, he has shortness of breath and nerve pain. At the same time, after several months he no longer needs artificial ventilation, his torso is more stable and his circulatory problems have reduced. After another operation and an infection, he can sit in a wheelchair again for the first time since mid-November in these sunny January days. “Sometimes you have to reflect on the small progress. “But you don’t always see them so easily in a long process,” he says.
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SPORT BILD visited him at the rehabilitation center in Pforzheim for a report. Glemser is there for three hours that day. Some weeks he has three such units, in others he is there five times for six hours. Three therapists and Glemser’s friend Lara support him with the exercises. He can move the biceps muscles in both arms, but not the opposing triceps. The shoulders can be used. “Over the months, the core stability has improved somewhat,” says Glemser. “I don’t tip over easily. But unfortunately no functionalities of other parts of the body have returned.” Many areas are numb, as if after an anesthetic injection.
In the hands of the intensive care therapists
Source: picture alliance/dpa/Bernd Weißbrod
“Rehab is extremely strenuous, especially mentally,” says Glemser. “I try to control the body, but it cannot be controlled. The body doesn’t do what I want or what it should. I have to concentrate on a thousand things at the same time all the time, targeting each joint and muscle individually. It’s like trying to push a bench away but it won’t move. Then you push more and more and exhaust yourself. Sometimes I get breathing and circulatory problems, which put a lot of stress on the body.”
In cold weather, Glemser freezes due to lack of exercise
Another part of the rehabilitation is exercises in the Lokomat, a walking robot. He is clamped there standing, his legs are moved by the machine as if he were walking. This stimulates the nerves and helps them remember the movements. “I run in it for about 45 minutes,” says Glemser.
Glemser is endlessly grateful for the support of his partner. “I can hardly put it into words,” he says
Source: picture alliance/dpa/Bernd Weißbrod
He rarely leaves the house so far. The rehab usually robs him of all his strength. In cold weather he freezes due to lack of exercise. “We’re trying to find a routine and want to go out to eat again,” reports Glemser: “But I also get exhausted extremely quickly, after an hour or two.” Mentally, everything is demanding: “It’s an incredibly difficult situation,” says Glemser. “There are better days and worse days. When faced with everyday situations, I naturally compare in my head how I used to do things and how I can no longer do them. Of course that’s stressful.”
Whoever was at Glemser’s side before the shitty day and is also at his side after the shitty day is his girlfriend, who got together with him just a few months before the shitty day. So there is also a time for the couple before making plans and a time when they have to throw out old plans and make new ones.
700,000 euros were raised in donations
“We only had a very short time to ourselves before the accident, during which we couldn’t really say how we really felt about each other. On the day of the accident, I realized how much I love him and what he means to me,” says Lindmayer. “I still see him as the same person. We got to know each other in a completely different way, much more vulnerable, but we also discovered the great strength in each other.”
The accident sparked immense sympathy; almost 70,000 euros were raised in a fundraising campaign. This should be the basis for a new, different life for the two of them. “My goal is to get back on my feet to some extent,” says Glemser, who also points out that doctors are very careful with prognoses for injuries as serious as his.
What may time bring? In any case, Glemser still has something to say. “What Lara does and how she supports me,” he says, “can hardly be put into words. That’s incredible. I am eternally grateful and happy for what she does.”
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