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She went into the new year with a routine she’d enjoyed for years: playing board games with family and friends and tucking into an oliebal, a traditional Dutch doughnut. But for Lauren Hoeve, celebrating the start of 2024 had nothing to do with the prospect of possibility or the excitement of what the months ahead might hold.
For her, it was all about relief. In less than a month she’d be dead and finally free of her world of pain.
On 27 January, the 28-year-old concluded a process she’d begun a few years earlier when she’d decided to end her life by assisted suicide. The agony of living with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) since 2019 had become unbearable to Lauren, who documented her decision to choose death and the final years of her life in her blog, Brain Fog.
