Heavily affected by Lyme disease, Stéphanie Lavoie is exhausted from fighting. Her condition does not improve despite the treatments received in Mexico and here, she feels abandoned by the system, to the point where she has initiated the process of having recourse to medical assistance in dying.
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“The suffering is made really difficult morally to always be bedridden, 100% taken care of by other people, to have no other entertainment except listening to podcasts and audio books. Always being in care, it’s not a life either for me or for the members of my family,” says the 29-year-old woman.
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“I understand it. I wouldn’t have fought so hard, I would never have gotten to where she is. I don’t know anyone as strong as her,” says her partner Michael.
Despite her condition and her cries for help, Stéphanie does not yet have a family doctor and the specialist clinic for Lyme disease has just told her that there is nothing they can do for her: “It’s stressful.”
While it is true that her treatment in Mexico brought her some benefits, the young woman from Drummondville is very far from having regained an acceptable quality of life. “I have been eating only bananas for months. I’m losing weight every week, the last time I weighed myself I was 68 pounds.”
In a month the young woman will celebrate her 30th birthday.
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She still remains hopeful that a new development will make her abandon her process of medical assistance in dying: “For me to change my mind, I would have to be given hope of being supported at different levels. First through the health system and also finding ways to get financial help so that we can continue to dig in and continue to move forward.”
A crowdfunding campaign was set up to help him.