A bed-bound mother-of-four suffering from long Covid claims she has been left with ‘no choice’ but to travel 800 miles to Switzerland and end her life.
Kelly Louise Smith-May, 41, claims she has been left shackled by a ‘living death sentence’ after being unable to recover from catching the virus in 2021.
‘You can’t live like this and I wasn’t born to just lay in bed, rotting away at 41-years-old,’ Mrs Smith-May told MailOnline.
‘This is a living death sentence. I have had no improvements for over three years. Life is for living not to be trapped in a bed suffering from over 50 symptoms. It is horrific.’
The former carer, whose health gradually deteriorated over three years, spends most of her days lying in bed, unable to move, eat and sometimes even talk.
She has been unable to care for her children – Kai, Tawny, Zayn, and Jett – the youngest of whom is seven, and was forced to give up work.
‘I get exhausted, even just trying to read to the kids takes it out of me,’ she adds. ‘It takes my mental energy and then I end up getting so upset. I am in pain 24/7.’
After feeling ‘let down’ by doctors and nurses within the NHS, Mrs Smith-May, who was later diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, made the difficult decision to end her life at Pegasos, a voluntary assisted dying organisation near Basel.
Kelly Louise Smith-May, 41, from Chipping Sodbury in Gloucestershire, is seeking £10,000 to travel to an assisted dying facility ‘to end her suffering’
Kelly Louise Smith-May, 41, pictured before she was ill, claims she has been left shackled by a ‘living death sentence’
The mother-of-four is bed-bound and cannot move, eat and sometimes even talk or read a story to her children
‘I would never want to do it if I had a choice but I have been left without a choice,’ she explains. ‘All I do is suffer, suffer, suffer. I just want to once and for all be out of it.’
The once ‘vibrant, lively’ woman is determined not to end her life by poisioning, hanging or starving herself to death, as she claims other chronic fatigue sufferers have done.
Mrs Smith-May is predominately cared for by her husband Stuart as well as her 78-year-old grandmother Kay Philpott, who visits her multiple times a week.
While her family are ultimately supportive of Mrs Smith-May’s choice to humanely end her life each day they pray for her recovery.
‘I keep hoping and praying that she will get better and something will happen, which is a grandmother’s only wish. I live in hope, she doesn’t,’ Ms Philpott said.
‘I will support if that is what she needs because I keep thinking what life has she got? It’s the same each day and it’s really upsetting to see and makes me ill as well.
‘I still hope and pray something can be done – I have to be that way – but if it’s her wish, I have to support her in that.’
The mother-of-four, whose youngest child constantly asks her ‘Mummy, can you spit the virus out to get better?’, is currently trying to raise enough funds to travel to Switzerland.
Kelly, pictured with her husband Stuart before her illness, said that she’s been let down by the NHS
Her condition has gradually worsened ever since she caught Covid in December 2021
Mrs Smith-May, a stay-at-home mum, describes her illness as ‘being poisoned every minute of the day’ and a ‘living death sentence’,
She launched a GoFundMe page to raise the £10,000 she needs to travel and end her life in the non-for-profit assisted dying facility.
As she can only lie down and is unable to even use a wheelchair, bought through the fundraiser, Mrs Smith-May wants to hire a camper van so her husband can drive to Switzerland via France using the Euro Tunnel.
Mrs Smith-May had hoped that the newly proposed assisted dying laws would include those sufferers of chronic fatigue.
Proposals made by the Government, however, mean that assisted dying would only be avaliable to terminally ill people, over the age of 18, who are expected to die within six months.
Those deciding would need to have clear mental capacity to choose and be free to make the decision without coercion.
Two separate declarations would need to be signed and witnessed, as well as two different doctors agreeing the patient is eligeble within a seven day window.
Mrs Smith-May, however, believes the proposals, which MPs voted for in November, leave out those suffering from chronic illness who have ‘no quality of life’.
She said: ‘Euthanasia, assisted dying should be legal in the UK not just for terminally ill but for chronically ill people as well, for people like me with no quality of life.’
‘If she were an animal you would put it down but you can’t do that to a human being,’ her grandmother agrees.
‘She wants to be the vibrant, lively girl that she used to be. We would always go shopping together and do things out and about but now she is just stuck in a bed in the darkness all day. There are blackout blinds pulled down and there is no sunlight in here.
‘It is just dismal and I don’t think, to be honest with you, if it was a dog you would put it down. There is no quality of life. She is trying to survive but what kind of life is it when you spend it lying in bed every day?’
Her GoFundMe page has raised over £8,000 in just over a year but has failed as of yet to reach its target.
Long Covid, a poorly-understood phenomenon, can leave sufferers with a persistent cough, fatigue, muscle aches and loss of smell.
According to a heartbreaking GoFundMe post authored by a close friend, Mrs Smith-May is no longer able to look after her children ¿ Kai, Tawny, Zayn, and Jett ¿ ‘whom she absolutely adores with every piece of her heart’
While many long Covid sufferers find their symptoms eventually fade, some people, just like Mrs Smith-May, experience them for months or even years.
Some experts consider long Covid to be on par with chronic fatigue syndrome, also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) — a historically disputed condition that has often been overlooked as laziness.
However, it is now recognised as condition by both the NHS and World Health Organization.
Mrs Smith-May’s family claim her long Covid progressed into ME.
Viral infections are hypothesised to be a potential trigger for people to develop the condition by both charities and the NHS.
Much like long Covid, there is no test that can diagnose myalgic encephalomyelitis and no established cure. The NHS instead focuses on treating sufferers’ symptoms to help people manage their condition.
Mild cases are treated with cognitive behavioural therapy and ‘energy management’ — a system to help patients utilise their limited energy throughout the day.
Drugs can help sufferers with pain and insomnia they experience, as well as devices like wheelchairs to increase their mobility.
Similarly, long Covid treatment also focuses on helping sufferers alleviate the dozen or so symptoms attributed to the condition.
The most common symptom of chronic fatigue syndrome is extreme tiredness but sufferers can also experience muscle and joint pain, flu-like symptoms, nausea and cognitive problems.
In rare severe cases, people with the condition can no longer use the toilet or feed themselves independently.
As both chronic fatigue syndrome and long Covid are poorly understood conditions, the relationship between the two is uncertain.
Medically assisted dying, or euthanasia, is illegal in the UK, and can be prosecuted as manslaughter or murder with a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
Helping someone take their own life, called assisted suicide, is also an offence and punishable by up to 14 years in prison, but the law looks set to change.
In November 2024, MPs voted in favour of assisted dying as historic legislation cleared its first hurdle in the House of Commons.
The Commons approved the second reading of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill by 330 votes to 275, majority 55, to continue its progress through Parliament.
If it completes its passage into law, the Bill will allow terminally ill, mentally competent adults – with less than six months to live – to seek an assisted death in England and Wales with the approval of two doctors and a High Court judge.
No date has been given yet for the Bill to return to the Commons for further debate by all MPs at report stage, but it is likely to be towards the end of April.
