Best-known progeria Fleming Michiel Vandeweert: his two Dragon Ball Z tattoos
There is no doubt that Michiel Vandeweert (24) from Diepenbeek, who suffers from progeria, is a big fan of Dragon Ball Z. He also showed that through 2 characters from the anime permanent placed on his body! Of course also, by our artists.
Thus, in less than a month, he has become 2 tattoos richer.
Goku?
During a Gossip Guy episode in which Ender, asks Yens Wittebrouck (of De Mol) a few questions and surprises him with a tattoo, Ender decides to also get his first tattoo himself.
On the day we tattooed Ender, Michiel was also there. Thus he got in touch with our studio and on that same day, he had a tattoo done on his upper left leg. The design? Who else but Goku, the main character of Dragon Ball Z!
But also Majin Buu!
However, it didn't stop there. About 3 weeks later, he stopped by our studio in Roeselare. Our manager Tom suggested this session to livestreaming at his Twitch channel, as this is Michiel's favorite activity. Online content creation is the main thing Michiel deals with.
That's how we did it, he streamed live on his Twitch channel and we streamed on our social media also. The design for this session was Majin Buu, one of the bad guys from Dragon Ball Z. During the livestream, we were able to ask him many questions.
When we asked him why Goku and Majin Buu, he told us that Dragon Ball Z had been his favorite anime since childhood. Although it may have been cliché, he thought Goku was very cool - so why not?
Future tattoos?
Whether he will post anything more in the future we don't know for now, but Michiel remains optimistic that he does want there. But "what" remains the question - probably more anime.
As for the rest, we asked Michiel a few more questions. We wanted to know a little more about his background know.
Some background
For those who do not yet know what progeria is, long story short this is a aging disease. It causes the body of a person with progeria to age much faster than someone without progeria. Thus, their body ages about 8 years in 1 calendar year of time. He was diagnosed at the tender age of 5 years old after his mother had suspected it for years, but had been rebuffed by her pediatrician and consulted several doctors. Given that he is now 24 years old, that is actually almost 200 years for a progeria patient. Surely that makes him almost the oldest since, so far, the oldest survivor with progeria reached 26.
Michiel also informed that there was nothing of medication for most of his life, but in the meantime there is medication that helps with stopping the thinning of his blood vessels.
He is not like other boys and we see that. And no, we're not talking about the visible characteristics that come along with progeria. We're talking about his mindset. By being able to ask him a few questions, we quickly found that this is a very positive person.
We couldn't resist asking the question Whether there is a reason why he lived to be twice as old as predicted, it is after all a medical miracle that he could sit with us. His answer? He doesn't know himself so we put it down to luck by "bad luck". The only thing that matters to him is that every day he is doing what he loves to do himself and from the looks of it, he is doing it.
He owes his positive mindset to his parents, because that's how he was raised. Despite his less than pleasant circumstances, his friends and family do make it all worth it. To be honest, that's all you need, too. As read in the life story blog written by his parents, there is a saying, "Healthy people have many wishes. Sick people have only one," but Michiel also has many and that's a good sign.
He only hopes to reach 30, and of course we wish him the same, and then some!
To end this, we would like to congratulate Michiel on the Goesting award which he recently received! If you would like to listen to the full Michiel Vandeweert tattoo podcast, you can this here do.
We don't know about you guys, but surely we are inspired by Michiel. Is he also an inspiration to you or do you have another inspiration you look up to? Let us know in the comments!
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