Terminally ill Missouri mom, 79, to head to Switzerland for assisted suicide: Ive had a great life

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.“She always either had three jobs or she was going somewhere, like to concerts or festivals,” Foeste said.“She was always busy, always.”Hendrix said she loved to hike, travel, walk and bike — and she always took Foeste to concerts when she was young, fostering a love of music in the next generation.“I would love to say I was a poet, a painter and a musician … I have nothing in that arena,” Hendrix said with a laugh.

“So I think that’s why I took up walking, because I can walk.I was an avid walker, anywhere from 3 to 5 miles a day … every day up until about 3 years ago.”That’s how she figured out she was sick, the mom told the station.“My shortness of breath kept getting worse and worse,” Hendrix said.

“Even on flat surfaces, I was breathing heavy.”Even before her own sickness, Hendrix had been a decades-long advocate for assisted suicide, getting involved with groups such as Compassion and Choices, a Colo...