53-year-old Anne Gabrielides is dying. In less than a year she has lost the ability to speak, control her hand movements and is left gasping for breath. She says it won’t be long before she “ends up in a wheelchair.”
The NSW mother-of-four has Motor Neurone Disease and the thing she fears most is “the prospect of suffering a horrible death.”
“I will be trapped inside my body with my same intellect, but unable to communicate, unable to feed myself, clean myself, or even move,” she says.
“You see, this disease always wins. It just keeps taking things from me until I eventually choke and or suffocate over a long drawn out and painful end.”
Anne is petitioning to change the euthanasia law in NSW to give her the right to “die peacefully at the end stage of this bastard disease,” and has started a petition to do so.
She writes, “Don’t worry, I plan on milking every drop of life out of my existence, but I want the right to choose my ending.”
“If I can deny this disease its last victory, it will be a fine day.”
Later this year the NSW Parliament is voting on the Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill. If it passes it will allow terminally ill people the option of an assisted death.
Anne’s Change.org petition has already reached 61,000 out of the 75,000 signature goal. She plans on delivering it to members of the NSW parliament in hopes of a law change.
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