A terminally ill Missouri mom is heading to Switzerland to end her own life before her disease makes the trip impossible.
Gayle Hendrix, a 79-year-old mother of two from Cape Girardeau, has struggled with a brutal combination of lupus and interstitial lung disease for the past four years. And although her friends say she doesn’t seem like she’s nearing the end, she says she knows otherwise.
“My friends will say, ‘But you don’t look or sound or act like somebody who is near death.’ But I am dying, and that’s what I want to control,” the former human-resources worker recently told local news station 12 KFVS.
“I don’t want to get to the point of, ‘This is existing, not living,’ ” she said, adding that she’s tied to an oxygen machine and can only walk short distances. “I’ve had a great life, and I want to have some dignity when I’m going to the next phase.”
Hendrix, a retiree originally from North Carolina, was always active and busy before her cruel diagnoses, daughter Charlene Foeste told the station.