My childhood and youth I spend on the little farm of my parents in the south of Upper Austria. After commercial college I am long engaged in tax. Incidentally, I do volunteer work in a nursing home and in a hospital. After 11 years of working with numbers, I decide to do my volunteer work for a full-time. I'm studying theology and change into hospital chaplaincy.
My expertise that I earn me during clinical pastoral education in Landesklinikum Salzburg is supplemented by my own experience of illness. My first serious experience I have to do with 7 years. The first (and not last) time I am very close to death. My complaints are more and more diverse over the years of life. My inner strength and my faith will help me, still be successful in a job to do voluntary social work and can even climb 3000. With 32 years so it's over. Strong heart problems make their appearance. Five years later, I get my first coronary. Meanwhile, I have a riding accident. Several years opiate and pain are (partly even today) the result. With 39 years I have to resort to crutches because of strong rheumatic problems temporarily. Once I have the symptoms under control, I board with an extra dose of cortisone and painkillers my small local mountains. With 40 years I have to say goodbye to my professional life. Two years later, doctors discovered a rare disease in the abdomen, 16 years after the first visit to the doctor. In those two years, I spend most of time in hospitals, on the artificial feeding and strongest painkillers. My book How I survived a rare chronic and painful disease. The hooves of a zebra gives an insight into this time.
In 2007-2013 I hang very often on the artificial diet. Recently I feed myself on a port home via the vein. In July 2013 I find "random" the global specialist for my abdominal vascular disease (Wilkie's syndrome). The end of July, I will operate in Duisburg (Germany). After very hard weeks after surgery, I can eat normally again. It is a new feeling. On March 21, 2014, the switch is again on pain and this is called a relapse. Since then, I eat most of the time the vein. The feed backpack has become a part of my life. (See: On the way to normal life)
I take my disease at hand. With and through them I became to life and survival artist. Every day I am talking about the gift of my life. It is not self-evident.
