Matheus Marques was 18 years old when he underwent surgery in September 2025. A tumor in his cervical spinal cord had to be removed. When he woke up, he couldn’t move anything below his neck. Nothing.
The doctors, in Capão da Canoa, Brazil, didn’t promise him anything for certain. He might regain all his movement, some of it, or none. That’s how they told him, without sugarcoating it.
Matheus had grown up in a Christian family, but one of those where faith is inherited without much questioning. Quadriplegia made him question it. He decided to be baptized amid uncertainty, when he still didn’t know whether he would walk again.
“If I hadn’t gone through everything I went through, I surely wouldn’t have a relationship with God”, he confessed months later.
With constant rehabilitation, he began to regain movement. First, a finger. Then, an arm. Today he walks without crutches, although he carries them with him just in case.
“God has worked miracles, and I’ve been living a normal life”, he said.
His recovery is still ongoing. But every step he takes is proof that a diagnosis is not always a sentence.