Marieke Vervoort has ended her life at the age of 40 after a long, tiring battle with her degenerative muscle disorder.
The Belgian Paralympic contestant rose to fame after winning medals in the wheelchair sprint. She was suffering from a disease that caused excruciating pain, paralysis, and seizures in her legs.
When Marieke won two gold medals in the 2016 Paralympics, she revealed for the first time that she had been thinking of ending her own life with euthanasia.
She further said that she was not going to kill herself right away but planned to do so when her “bad days outnumber the good.”
The Paralympic winner, regarded as an inspirational figure by many, started the legal process of euthanasia back in 2008 in Belgium where the practice is legal.
According to a statement from Diest, Marieke’s hometown, she “responded to her choice on Tuesday evening.”
Just days before her death, Marieke posted a photo of her sprint at the Paralympics on Insta with a caption, saying: “Can’t forget the good memories!”
Marieke openly spoke of her suffering, telling people how she had lost her eyesight, had trouble sleeping and how the painkillers slowly stopped working for her.
Speaking to the Associated Press at the 2016 Paralympics in Rio, she said that she could hardly sleep for 10 minutes and she was constantly in pain severe enough to make people pass out by just looking at her in that condition.
She also said that sports had a big hand in keeping her alive despite all the hardships she was facing.
“It’s too hard for my body. Each training I’m suffering because of pain. Every race I train hard. Training and riding and doing competition are medicine for me. I push so hard – to push literally all my fear and everything away,” she said at the time.
In a 2017 interview with the Telegraph, Marieke said her pain had grown beyond her ability to bear. “I don’t want to suffer any more,” she said.
She spoke with her pet dog Zenn by her side and told that she had worked on every last detail of her death, and had even written letters to people close to her.
Death wishes of the suffering athlete included releasing white butterflies from a red box at the exact moment of her death and spreading her ashes in the area of Lanzarote after cremation.
In the 2016 interview, she further said: “It’s too hard for me now. I get more and more depressed. I never had these feelings before. I cry a lot.”
Marieke, who always supported the right to use euthanasia, said that it gave her control over her own life.
“I’m really scared, but those (euthanasia) papers give me a lot of peace of mind because I know when it’s enough for me, I have those papers,” said Marieke.
“If I didn’t have those papers, I think I’d have done suicide already. I think there will be fewer suicides when every country has the law of euthanasia. … I hope everybody sees that this is not murder, but it makes people live longer,” she added.
Marieke’s health issues started in 2000 when she was diagnosed with progressive tetraplegia, which eventually led to paralysis. Doctors believe the condition was caused due to a rare deformation between her fifth and sixth cerebral vertebrae.
In 2007, Marieke started playing wheelchair basketball to help her with the recovery process. She had plans to take part in triathlon at the 2008 Hawaii Ironman.
However, her health went to a decline from there. By 2008, she was not able to take part in triathlon so she decided to go for wheelchair sprinting.
Marieke also started having epileptic seizures in 2014, with one of them causing her to spill boiling water over her legs, leaving her hospitalized for months.
Replaced!