Why Kay Henderson chose to end her life today
NSW woman Kay Henderson has taken her final breaths surrounded by her loved ones after a lengthy battle with a debilitating condition.
Health
Don't miss out on the headlines from Health. Followed categories will be added to My News.
The family of a NSW woman who was voluntarily euthanised this afternoon after suffering years of pain has remembered her as a loving aunty.
Kay Henderson peacefully went to sleep today at 1.23pm after scheduling the appointment herself.
“Aunty Kay peacefully went to sleep today at 1.23pm surrounded by her closest family and friends by her side,” her TikTok account posted on Friday.
“Please let me grieve as well as my family and I will do another post in a few days and answer any questions.
“Thank you all for giving Aunty KK the love and support the last few weeks.”
The 47-year-old said she was well and truly ready to leave this earth and took her final breaths on Friday afternoon thanks to NSW’s Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) laws.
Kay, from Coffs Harbour, suffered from a debilitating disease known as Marfan Syndrome – a genetic disorder leading to problems with the development of connective tissue, which supports the bones, muscles, organs, and tissues.
She has experienced pain since her teen years, but has been in excruciating agony since 2019.
“My quality of life is … nothing, really,” Kay told news.com.au’s From The Newsroom podcast before her passing.
“My days would just be just to wake up, take my morning meds, feed the cats, go back to bed and go to sleep.
“Then I’d wake up, take the nightly meds, feed the cats, go back to bed, watch TV and fall asleep.
“That’s pretty much my day to day.”
Making the decision to end her own life has been something Kay has been thinking about for a long time.
But it was only a few weeks ago that she took the steps to make it happen.
“My doctor actually brought it to my attention when he came to visit me a couple of weeks ago,” she explained.
“He looked at me and said, I haven’t seen you for a good couple of months, and I can see just looking at you that your life is totally different now.
“I can see how much pain you’re in. How you’re struggling with your body, just moving around the house.
“He said, if this is something you want to do, I will one thousand per cent stand by your side.
“I said, yes, give me the number, let’s do it.”
It is hard for most of us to imagine what we would do on the last day of our lives. For Kay, it was easy.
All she wanted was a nice swim in the ocean, to listen to her favourite tunes and to spend time with the people she loved the most.
“We’re going for our last ocean swim on Thursday afternoon,” she said.
“We’ll go down to the beach, we’ve hired one of those big beach chairs so they can wheel me into the water.
“I’ve got a speaker that my friend bought me and we’ll be playing some music in the water.
“We will have a bit of dance, have a laugh and a chat.”
On the morning of the procedure, she will have her family and friends come around to share some food and say their final goodbyes.
“I’m having it catered, sandwiches and fruit, just normal things us Aussies would put together,” she said.
“People will be turning up from around 10am. We will sit around and talk about our favourite memories, what we will miss.
“There will be a lot of hugs and tears. I haven’t been that emotional yet, I have only cried maybe two or three times.
“But I am pretty sure that day I’ll be walking around with a box of tissues.”
On Friday afternoon, she will put on her comfiest pair of pyjamas and crawl into bed for the very last time.
“The doctor will come in after lunch,” she explained.
“Once I am ready and comfortable in bed, we will start playing Cold Chisel’s Flame Trees, which is my favourite song.
“They said the whole experience takes between 15 to 20 minutes.
“I’ll be holding hands with my mum and my nieces, my friends standing at the end of the bed.
“It will be beautiful.”
Kay said that if she did not go through with this, she feels her life expectancy would likely only be “a couple of weeks”, although doctors had given her around six months.
There are several steps she needed to go through to get the green light on her decision.
“Only you can make that first phone call,” she said.
“They set up a database and put in information about you, and then they say that someone will contact you and organise for two different doctors to come out on separate days and speak with you.
“They’ll ask you questions about your health, your quality of life and what you want in the future.
“I met with the first doctor while I was still in hospital. She was lovely, she said yes I’ll give you my tick of approval.
“The next day, I came home and met with the second doctor, he said yes I’m giving you my tick of approval.”
She explained that the two doctors then leave her to think about her decision for a few days before turning once more to ask her what she truly wants.
Her answer was simple.
“I told them I want to die peacefully,” she said.
“Surrounded by my loved ones. And I want to do that through VAD.”
They submitted Kay’s application to the board the next day, and the following morning she got a call saying she had been approved for Voluntary Assisted Dying.
Finally getting the green light to take her own life, Kay said she felt a wave of excitement wash over her.
“I was excited,” she said.
“That might sound funny. But I was excited.
“A huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders.”
Her mum has been one of her biggest supporters throughout her journey.
“I actually didn’t tell mum that I was going to go ahead with it,” she revealed.
“She was in hospital, she came home, then I went to hospital. So I made the decision on my own, with my palliative care team.
“I told her I’d put in an application, she said ‘oh wow, that’s amazing’.
“She said ‘I’m so proud of you’ and that she would stand behind me 100 per cent.”
Kay said she believes in the afterlife and hopes she will be reunited with her loved ones, including her father, when she passes.
She also says if she can, she will be dropping little hints to her loved ones to let them know she is still around.
“I’m a spiritualist,” she said.
“I am hoping that I will open my eyes and see my dad and my godparents, standing there with their arms open.
“I’ve told my family that I’d try to send them a sign once I’m gone. All of a sudden, they’ll hear a lot of Cold Chisel being played.
“They will most likely smell my perfume.
“Or, if they’re lucky enough to be able to see spirits, I may come and sit on the end of their bed and have a conversation with them.”
Kay has been sharing her journey to TikTok, where she has amassed thousands of new followers in the last week.
While the majority of people have been supportive, many have been telling her not to go through with the procedure.
She chooses not to listen to negative comments and is grateful for “all the love” she is getting from her new friends.
“People have said to me, oh you’re killing yourself,” she said.
“And I say yes, I am killing myself, but it’s been approved by NSW Health. It has been conducted with nurses and doctors. It is a medical procedure.
“It is not me having to leave a note and do something to myself, that maybe someone doesn’t have to walk in and see.
“This will be me laying in my bed, surrounded by the people that I love, taking my last breath and dying peacefully.”
Kay’s mum said that while she will miss her daughter, she finds comfort in the fact her spirit will remain.
“A couple of nights ago, it kind of hit me that there’ll be no more body, no more body to hug me,” Coralee Wells told The Daily Telegraph.
“But I believe she’s doing the right thing. Being a spiritualist I believe she will come visit me. I know she will.
“No mum wants to bury their daughter, they want it to be the other way round.
“But this is right for Kay and I am so very proud of her.
“There are times I felt like I have pushed her into medications, operations, she’s been through such a lot.
“But I feel blessed. I feel special that I’ve been able to travel this journey with Kay.
“I just feel so proud because she’s a pioneer and she’s leaving her mark on this earth that we live in and I know that when she does pass, I know I’ll feel her around me.
“I know that she will visit me, she will protect me, she will love me.”
New South Wales passed the Voluntary Assisted Dying Act in May 2022, with eligible people being able to access VAD in NSW from November 2023.
jasmine.kazlauskas@news.com.au
More Coverage
Originally published as Why Kay Henderson chose to end her life today
This test helped me avoid a heartbreaking pregnancy loss
After struggling to fall pregnant and turning to IVF, Lucy Glade-Wright took this test which helped her avoid a devastating loss.
I wish I knew this before going into premature menopause at 32
Steph Hilton went into premature menopause at only 32. She says she started to get these symptoms before the devastating diagnosis and has this one regret.