In early 2022, Sarah Smith was ready to die. She had battled chronic health conditions for a third of her 74 years. “I’m on my way out,” she told her family.
“I know I’m on my way out.” Smith, from Mt Cook in Wellington, had lived a full life. She worked in foreign aid at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, leading a student exchange programme.
An enthusiastic cook, she later ran the cafe Zephyr, just off Lambton Quay, where her rhubarb muffins were so popular they usually sold out by 9.30am. She was an amateur actor, once playing Olivia in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night , but turned down an offer to become a professional because it would not support her two children, Andrew and Victoria.
She drafted a novel and volunteered for the Samaritans. Her health problems began to stack up at age 48. She was diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis (also known as chronic fatigue syndrome) and later Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which affects connective tissue in the body and leads to highly sensitive skin and joints.
In her early 50s, she had a brain hemorrhage, which severely affected her speech, her ability to walk and the use of one of her arms. By her late 50s, Smith was in such chronic pain she had to lie down most of the day. Over the next 20 years, her pain worsened and mobility reduced.
A geriatrician who treated her in 2020, when she was 70, said she had the health of a person 20 years older, and her treatment should shift to palliative care. Her husband, Ian Johns, said Sm.