Wendy Mitchell, who wrote about her struggle with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease in three books, has died at 68, the Guardian reports.
In a blog entry posted Thursday, Mitchell wrote, “If you’re reading this, it means this has probably been posted by my daughters as I’ve sadly died. Sorry to break the news to you this way, but if I hadn’t, my inbox would eventually have been full of emails asking if I’m OK, which would have been hard for my daughters to answer.”
Mitchell, who lived in East Yorkshire, England, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2014 when she was 58. Four years after her diagnosis, she published her first book, the memoir Somebody I Used To Know. A critic for Kirkus called the book “a sensitive, affective, and moving chronicle of how a woman with Alzheimer’s has refused to let the disease completely rule her life.”
Two more books would follow: What I Wish People Knew About Dementia in 2022, and One Last Thing: How To Live With the End in Mind last year.
In her blog post, Mitchell wrote that she would have chosen assisted dying if it were legal in the U.K., and had planned to travel to Switzerland to die there, but a fall that broke her wrists made that impossible. She decided to stop eating or drinking instead.
“I wasn’t depressed, I wasn’t forced or cajoled in any way whatsoever, it was solely down to my choice,” she wrote. “I was ready. You may or may not agree with what I’ve done, how and when I’ve chosen to leave this world, but the decision was totally mine … Thank you to all those who have supported me along the way… Your support was invaluable.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
