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Schumi: 'Has speech, memory problems'

LAKE GENEVA, Switzerland - Earlier today Wheels24 reported that seriously-injured Marussia Formula 1 driver Jules Bianchi's progress was out of his induced coma and back home in France; now there is ffurther news of Michael Schumacher's condition.

Schumacher is being nursed at his home on the shore of Lake Geneva. According to a report in the UK's Guardian newspaper, former F1 driver Philippe Streiff says his friend Schumacher is paralysed, in a wheelchair and has memory and speech problems from the brain damage he sustained in a skiing accident a year earlier.

Streiff has been in a wheelchair since a crash in 1989.

Wheels24 reported on Schumacher’s December 2013 incident when he suffered head injuries during a skiing incident and was placed in an induced coma by doctors.

PATIENCE NEEDED

Schumacher was taken home in September 2014 but Streiff told a French radio that the seven-times F1 champion’s condition “remained grave”.

Streiff was quoted as saying: “He is getting better but everything is relative. It’s very difficult. He can’t speak. Like me he is in a wheelchair, paralysed. He has memory problems and speech problems.”

The Guardian was told by a spokesperson for Schumacher that Streiff’s comments were “his opinions”

The report also quoted a doctor, Jean-Francois Payen who has been treating Schumacher, as saying in October that he could need years to recover.

Payen said (as wheels24 also reported at the time): “I have noticed some progress but I would say we will have to give him time. We are in a time-scale of one to three years, so you need patience.”

Read the Guardian story here.

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