25-Year-Old Will End Her Life with Medical Aid in Dying

A 25-year-old is choosing to end her life with medical aid in dying after living with debilitating pain for the majority of her life.

Annaliese Holland from Adelaide, South Australia, spent most of her childhood in the hospital suffering from an unknown illness. Her health significantly declined over the years as she dealt with a slew of symptoms, including daily chronic pain, nausea and vomiting. For the past 10 years, she’s also been on total parenteral nutrition (TPN), being fed through IVs.

“My bowel acts as if it’s blocked but there’s nothing actually blocking it. It’s just the nerves don’t work so, as gross as this is, my stools would back up so much that I would throw it up or drain out my tummy,” she told News AU.

“I had feeding tubes placed in me and I was still vomiting and then we discovered that my stomach wasn’t emptying so I was put on TPN,” she continued. “Because of the line straight into your bloodstream, if you get an infection it turns to sepsis really quickly which is very, very, dangerous.”

It wasn’t until Annaliese turned 18 and transitioned from her pediatric facility to the general hospital that she was finally diagnosed. She learned that she had autoimmune autonomic ganglionopathy, a rare neurological disease that damages the nerves that control heart rate, blood pressure, digestion and urination.

By age 22, Annaliese was told that her condition was terminal.

Annaliese now has multi-organ failure and has survived sepsis 25 times. Her strong medications have caused her to develop severe osteoporosis. She’s fractured her spine in four places, cracked her sternum in half and has nearly crushed her heart and lungs. 

Steroids have also caused necrosis — a condition where the blood supply to her bones has failed — resulting in her teeth blackening and starting to fall out.

“I was so miserable,” she said. “You can’t change it so you have to just deal with it really. Even though there’s beautiful moments in my days, they are exhausting and long. I’m in chronic debilitating pain.” 

“I missed out on formals, graduations, my 18th, 21st [birthdays], they were all in hospitals being really sick. All my friends, they’re having babies, getting engaged, married. Everyone’s life is moving and I’m just stuck. I’m not living. I’m surviving every day, which is tough.”

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Annaliese said her disease is like “walking on a field of landmines.”

It got to the point where she now no longer wants to endure the pain, sharing with her family that she wants to “die on my own terms” with medical aid in dying. What solidified her decision was seeing herself in the mirror one day while hospitalized and not even recognizing herself.

“It wasn’t me and I was so exhausted,” she said. “Life for me now is getting up each day doing what I need to do medically, taking the painkillers, trying to get through the day, just to go to bed and do it all again.”

“I have the most incredible team of doctors and nurses who have watched what I have been through and I told them I don’t want this anymore,” she admitted.

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But the idea is heartbreaking for her parents and sister.

Annaliese’s mother, Armanda, said she’s always hoping for a miracle but she “knows realistically what challenges” her daughter faces. But her father, Patrick, told the outlet that he’s seen her overcome every setback and knows she can get past the illness.

“Every time she goes to the hospital, she fights for her own life,” Patrick said, holding back tears. “The amount of times Annie has been in hospital and on her deathbed… to have to sit there and watch her go through it … but she is amazing.”

“I remember talking to my dad in the kitchen one night and I said, ‘Dad, I’ve had enough.’ And he went, ‘So you’re giving up?’” Annaliese shared. 

Annaliese said the moment that helped her dad come to terms with her decision was when she was in the hospital after being resuscitated by doctors. She pleaded with him, “Dad, please let me go. I will not hate you if you let me go.”

“I said, ‘If this happens again, I don’t want anything. And please know that in my heart, you letting me go and saying no to treatment…I’m happy with and that’s what I want,’” she recalled, bursting into tears. “He turned to me and goes, ‘I don’t know how you do it and I totally understand that you’ve had enough.’ ” 

So, three weeks after speaking to psychologists and going through the qualification process, Annaliese was approved for voluntary assisted dying (VAD), which she calls her “safety blanket” and a weight off her shoulders.

Medical aid in dying (MAID) is legal in every state in Australia for those who are terminally ill, mentally competent adults. MAID or VAD are different from euthanasia — which is illegal — because the patients themselves administer prescribed drugs to end their lives, rather than a doctor.

“I think it’s so weird to be happy, but I was so happy when I found out I was approved, I was crying,” Annaliese said. “It’s hard because for me I am in pain and then I am at peace, but then I put the pain onto my family. You have this battle in your head of not wanting to hurt them so I will put some thought into how it will happen.”

“For me, I don’t want to have to wake up every day with anxiety about the pain that I know is ahead for me. The pain of starving to death when they can’t feed me anymore, or the horror of sepsis. Knowing I can go when the time is right is just a huge relief,” she explained. “I feel so lucky that I do have this choice.” 

She adds, “It’s one of the bravest things you could ever do, to say I want VAD. It’s not giving up. You’ve had enough and you fought bloody hard.”