After years of struggling with Lyme disease, a 30-year-old woman from Drummondville took her last breath after requesting medical assistance in dying. Her death leaves many questioning how could this happen and wondering why she couldn't access the medical support she so desperately needed. Global’s Gloria Henriquez reports.
The illness tore into her body. At first, aches crept into Lavoie’s feet and then spread to her knees and joints. Four years ago, she started using a wheelchair.The pain became so excruciating she was confined to her bed for the last two years of her life. Her hands and feet curved from the disease. Lavoie chose a doctor-assisted death as the pain became intolerable. She described feeling her body nearing the end.
“A part of me is broken from her loss and from the promise. The promise that we made ourselves to finally one day find the healing. We were looking for it together,” said Simard, who is also a co-ordinator with the Association québecoise de la maladie de Lyme. “She was a fighter,” Cathy Lavoie said. “When one door was shutting, she knocked another one and tried something else.”
Her symptoms became so severe she became bedbound, lost 35 pounds and questioned how anyone could live like this. Simard also considered a doctor-assisted death.While her latest treatment seems to have helped, Simard is still dealing with symptoms every day. More needs to be done to help patients with the tick-borne illness, she said.