Breathless Life

As she was lovesick at the time, 16-year-old Nina Dorizzi secretly wished for some disease. She wanted to be sick for one or two weeks, so that everybody would have take care of her. But she actually never expected shed become handicapped. She was diagnosed with polio and sentenced to a lifetime dependence on an artificial breathing device.

For twelve years she was interned in the University Clinic in Zurich. The insurance company decided that a portable breathing device was too expensive for the young woman. Friends, classmates, and her teacher collected waste paper and washed cars to support Nina in her wish for independence.

In 1980 Nina Dorizzi organized the first demonstration of handicapped people in Bern, Switzerland. Today, shes a committed politician and city council member, who devotes her time advocating for the interests of handicapped people and other marginal groups in the city of Winterthur. Nina is also the founder of an aid organization for the disabled in Russia and travels to Moscow several times every year to distribute wheelchairs, medicines, and hospital beds and to share her life experiences.