Häupl openly talks about cancer shock

Michael Häupl has not officially been the host at the Vienna City Hall for two years. After his resignation as mayor, he experienced a lot and had to go through a lot. After celebrating his 70th birthday last September, the diagnosis of shock came: cancer.

“That was luck in misfortune (…) Kidney cancer was found to be developing and, of course, we fought it right away. It went well. The operation was very good. I did not have to do any therapy, to fighting cancer. So that’s done with the operation, “says Häupl in an interview with” Vienna Today. “

But the road to recovery was difficult. The cult city chief contracted several infections and had to be in the intensive care unit for three weeks. But that is not all. It should be a full three months before I could leave the hospital. Something that really affected him. “Of course, if you have a relapse four, five, or six times, where you really feel like you’re getting better, then you may not be in a good mood,” he admits openly. However, he had received much support from his wife, who had cared for her “with much love and intensity.”

This experience and this disease changed him. He has become more thoughtful, he says, and his lifestyle is no longer the same. Ancient classics, such as schnitzel rolls or liver cheese, were removed. Instead, the sport is now busy. “Now I am motivated enough to implement it. I do a little sport practically every day, more intensely every other day,” says a significantly slimmer Häupl in the ORF interview. But he doesn’t want to do without his spritz wine entirely. “There is already a spray wine. Some days there is no spray wine, sometimes maybe two, but that’s it,” said the former mayor.

And despite their withdrawal from politics, it continues to haunt them. He gives his successor Michael Ludwig a “really good” certificate. Within the SPÖ he played exactly the role a chairman of the Vienna state party had to play. He will later explain in the interview that this is actually a compliment “in the highest tones” for his circumstances.

After the cancer diagnosis, the difficult time in the hospital and his lifestyle, Michael Häupl comes to a very positive conclusion. “Well I’m actually pretty happy after these two years,” he says. “You know when someone in Vienna says, ‘Hey, it’s not that bad,’ that’s the highest compliment you can say in Vienna can.”