Martine was born in Belgium , but transferred permanently to the USA in 1997 together with her husband of more than 30 years. Somewhere around 2000 they decided to make Naperville, Illinois, an affluent Chicago suburb, their permanent home. Of her two children, one is in Europe and the other is in the USA .

Up until November of 2002, Martine was leading a very interesting and active life, with lots of adventurous international travel and a large social circle. She walked over two miles a day, played golf several times a week in the summer, and had a personal trainer twice a week for intensive physical training.

She also has a very outgoing and adaptable character, which allowed her to develop a very large and international circle of good friends and relatives over the years. Martine was very healthy and ate very responsibly. She did not smoke and was in obvious good physical condition. Her husband often joked about her outliving her whole circle of friends, which would be detrimental to her active social life.

And then suddenly, in November of 2002, she developed a blood clot on her spinal cord, which left her paralyzed from the waist down. After the surgery, a new Martine awoke. Her pampered life was gone forever, and in its place, emerged a woman of determination, enormous willpower and incredible perseverance. She was now also going to cash in on the large circle of friends to help her in her quest towards independence and walking again. She was going to step into her mother’s footsteps.  Her mother was one of the first “reality” feminists in Belgium back in the 1940’s. And what that required, was rowing against the flow of commonly accepted medical practices. Her energy knew no bounds.

Today, against all odds, Martine walks again, albeit slow and with two canes. But it does not prevent her from having a renewed full social life and traveling again. And through all this, she kept her radiant personality. You can meet her and her husband, and learn more about their struggles and adventures in the book “Never Believe the Odds.”