Tiago Monteiro: ”Every time I opened my eyes I felt sick”
World Touring Car Championship Honda driver Tiago Monteiro is recovering after his major accident during testing and has opened up about his time right after the incident.
”The first few days were really hard because I couldn’t breathe very well, I couldn’t speak. I could speak but I couldn’t articulate very well what I wanted to say,” said Monteiro.
The massive g-forces of the crash affected his vision, making him feel sick.
”Every time I opened my eyes I felt sick, I could see double and I felt sick, I wanted to throw up every time,” said Monteiro.
”The first three or four days were just trying to recover those essential feelings like breathing properly, I could not eat or drink very well for the first four or five days so I was just trying to recover that. I couldn’t sleep for more than 15 minutes in a row, my headache would wake me up and you’re getting tired, more nervous, more upset and everything makes it so much harder.”
The turning point for the Portuguese was when he was transfered from Spain to his home country Portugal.
”When I finally got released from Barcelona and got flown from Barcelona to Portugal that was an important step psychologically because everything feels much better, you come back close to your family, when we start to get into the third week almost, started to stand up, started to move again, started to read all the amazing messages I got by email, by WhatsApp and everything, it was so overwhelming, so nice that so many people are thinking of you whether it’s friends, friends you haven’t seen for ages, or fans, it was really again an extra motivation,” said Monteiro.
While it is less then a week left to the WTCC Race of China, Monteiro says his recovery process is accelerating.
”To be honest the last four weeks have been very tough, I have been through lots of different phases, every week was a different phase but if you ask me now it’s a huge evolution, especially the last four or five days physically things have been getting much better, which motivates me because now I feel like things are going in the right direction. For the first few weeks the evolution is very slow but now it’s getting much, much better and faster,” said Monteiro.
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