Moving from fighting to curiosity

Five years ago, my life underwent a complete transformation. I went from a life full of travelling, being outdoors, and living an extremely active life, to being bedbound and back at my parents' place in my hometown, where I had left two decades ago.

After a car accident, I slowly started losing feeling in my left leg. The nerve pain that followed in the upcoming months was unbearable, day and night, with every movement, even in my sleep. Walking became almost impossible. Working was hard. I felt constantly drained.

I tried everything: treatments, therapies, medications. But nothing really helped. Every time I sat across from a doctor, I felt unheard. Within five minutes, I was back outside with some painkillers or a referral. My story just never truly landed.

That feeling, like walking through a foreign city where you don’t speak the language, is one you might know too. You try to explain your pain, but no one seems to understand. I kept hearing the same thing: “You just have to learn to live with it.” But deep down, I knew something else was going on.

I started withdrawing. Anxiety, sadness, and exhaustion took over. Some days, I didn’t even get out of bed. My body just gave up.

Still, I continued to fight to have my story heard. After a year and a half, the real diagnosis finally came: nerve damage and torn ligaments in my left leg, plus a crushed lower back. What I felt was real after all.

A complex surgery followed by 1,5 years of recovery. I could walk again, but the pain remained.

And then something shifted.
I decided to stop fighting. Instead of waiting for the pain to disappear, I began learning how to live with it. I took small walks. Practised relaxation exercises. I started tracking my pain each day and noticed patterns: what drained me, what gave me space. For the first time, I felt some control over my body again.

Slowly, things began to change. My sleep improved. My energy came back. The pain was still there, but it didn’t overwhelm me anymore. I realised my body and mind were stronger than I had ever believed.

Today, I still live with pain. But I travel again. I work again. I'm as much in the outdoors as possible. Not because everything is fixed, but because I’ve learned how to live with pain, instead of against it.

That entire journey became the beginning of Audiri.
Together with a team of healthcare professionals, engineers, and researchers, I built what I never received myself: a platform that helps people with pain communicate clearly with their healthcare providers, manage it better day by day, and finally feel truly understood and heard.