Annaliese Holland, 26, reveals heartbreaking reality behind her decision to access voluntary assisted dying

详细摘要

‘All I was doing was living day by day, fighting and fighting, hoping for that miracle, hoping for things to change. And it just didn’t.’

Annaliese “Annie” Holland is watching her friends get engaged, married and start families — milestones she knows she may never experience herself.

With her long blonde hair, blue eyes and warm smile, the 26-year-old Adelaide woman might appear to have her whole life ahead of her.

But behind her smile is more than a decade of suffering that has led her to make the heartbreaking decision to access voluntary assisted dying (VAD).

Holland was just 13 when she first became unwell, and later underwent an experimental procedure involving Botox injections into her pelvic floor to treat ongoing symptoms.

She said she suffered a seizure after waking from the procedure, and her health deteriorated rapidly from that point.

“That’s when my bowels started to shut down and my gut and my bladder and I became really sick,” she said on the Life Uncut podcast.

However, Holland acknowledged it was never established whether the treatment caused her condition.

It was not until she turned 18 that she was diagnosed with autoimmune autonomic ganglionopathy (AAG), a rare condition that affects the nervous system responsible for involuntary bodily functions, including digestion, heart rate and blood pressure.

While the condition is not necessarily terminal, Holland said her diagnosis came too late to prevent severe complications.

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