Annaliese Holland had spent so much of her twenty-five years inside hospital walls that the world outside sometimes felt like a distant dream.
For most people her age, life was only beginning — full of first jobs, first homes, new loves, weddings, babies, beginnings.

But for Annaliese, life had been a series of medical rooms, fluorescent lights, pain scales, IV poles, and days measured not in joy, but in how many crises she could survive before nightfall.

She had lived her whole life carrying a body that betrayed her.
A body that one day stopped digesting food.
A body whose nerves slowly died.
A body that refused to obey the simple commands needed to survive.
And she was tired — tired in a way that no rest and no medicine could cure.

Born and raised in Adelaide, South Australia, Annaliese had been a bright, warm child — sharp-witted, curious, endlessly polite.
Her parents used to joke that she “apologized for everything,” even for things that weren’t her fault.
But as she grew, her world began shrinking.
Hospitals became her second home by the time she was ten.
Doctors searched for answers but found none.
She grew up not with birthday parties or school dances, but with feeding tubes, scans, and pain she never fully understood.

By her teens, the symptoms multiplied.
Chronic pain.
Vomiting every day.
Constant nausea that stole her appetite and her joy.
At sixteen, she could no longer eat or drink enough to survive, and doctors placed her on total parenteral nutrition — TPN — artificial nutrition pumped directly into her bloodstream.

“It was like living on borrowed time,” she once said.
Every day on TPN came with the risk of infection.
Every infection risked sepsis.
And sepsis, if not caught in time, would kill her within hours.

She survived sepsis twenty-five times.
Twenty-five times her body was pushed to the brink, pulled back only by emergency intervention and her own stubborn will to live.
But every rescue left scars — organ damage, new weaknesses, deeper exhaustion.
Her spine fractured in four places.
Her sternum split open.
Her heart and lungs were nearly crushed.
Her bones, weakened by steroids, began dying from the inside out.
Her teeth blackened, loosened, and fell.

“It felt like my body was disappearing,” she said once, quietly.
“And I was disappearing with it.”

When she turned eighteen and moved from paediatrics to adult care, doctors finally found the name for the monster destroying her life — autoimmune autonomic ganglionopathy.
A rare neurological disease that attacked the nerves controlling the most basic human functions: heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, urination, temperature.

There was no cure.
No treatment.
Only the knowledge that it would get worse.

By twenty-two, she was told the truth no young woman should ever hear — her condition was terminal.
Her body was failing, slowly but surely.
Organ by organ.
System by system.

When she turned eighteen and moved from paediatrics to adult care, doctors finally found the name for the monster destroying her life — autoimmune autonomic ganglionopathy.
A rare neurological disease that attacked the nerves controlling the most basic human functions: heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, urination, temperature.

There was no cure.
No treatment.
Only the knowledge that it would get worse.

By twenty-two, she was told the truth no young woman should ever hear — her condition was terminal.
Her body was failing, slowly but surely.
Organ by organ.
System by system.

When she turned eighteen and moved from paediatrics to adult care, doctors finally found the name for the monster destroying her life — autoimmune autonomic ganglionopathy.
A rare neurological disease that attacked the nerves controlling the most basic human functions: heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, urination, temperature.

There was no cure.
No treatment.
Only the knowledge that it would get worse.

By twenty-two, she was told the truth no young woman should ever hear — her condition was terminal.
Her body was failing, slowly but surely.
Organ by organ.
System by system.

When she turned eighteen and moved from paediatrics to adult care, doctors finally found the name for the monster destroying her life — autoimmune autonomic ganglionopathy.
A rare neurological disease that attacked the nerves controlling the most basic human functions: heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, urination, temperature.

There was no cure.
No treatment.
Only the knowledge that it would get worse.

By twenty-two, she was told the truth no young woman should ever hear — her condition was terminal.
Her body was failing, slowly but surely.
Organ by organ.
System by system.

When she turned eighteen and moved from paediatrics to adult care, doctors finally found the name for the monster destroying her life — autoimmune autonomic ganglionopathy.
A rare neurological disease that attacked the nerves controlling the most basic human functions: heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, urination, temperature.

There was no cure.
No treatment.
Only the knowledge that it would get worse.

By twenty-two, she was told the truth no young woman should ever hear — her condition was terminal.
Her body was failing, slowly but surely.
Organ by organ.
System by system.

When she turned eighteen and moved from paediatrics to adult care, doctors finally found the name for the monster destroying her life — autoimmune autonomic ganglionopathy.
A rare neurological disease that attacked the nerves controlling the most basic human functions: heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, urination, temperature.

There was no cure.
No treatment.
Only the knowledge that it would get worse.

By twenty-two, she was told the truth no young woman should ever hear — her condition was terminal.
Her body was failing, slowly but surely.
Organ by organ.
System by system.

When she turned eighteen and moved from paediatrics to adult care, doctors finally found the name for the monster destroying her life — autoimmune autonomic ganglionopathy.
A rare neurological disease that attacked the nerves controlling the most basic human functions: heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, urination, temperature.

There was no cure.
No treatment.
Only the knowledge that it would get worse.

By twenty-two, she was told the truth no young woman should ever hear — her condition was terminal.
Her body was failing, slowly but surely.
Organ by organ.
System by system.

When she turned eighteen and moved from paediatrics to adult care, doctors finally found the name for the monster destroying her life — autoimmune autonomic ganglionopathy.
A rare neurological disease that attacked the nerves controlling the most basic human functions: heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, urination, temperature.

There was no cure.
No treatment.
Only the knowledge that it would get worse.

By twenty-two, she was told the truth no young woman should ever hear — her condition was terminal.
Her body was failing, slowly but surely.
Organ by organ.
System by system.

When she turned eighteen and moved from paediatrics to adult care, doctors finally found the name for the monster destroying her life — autoimmune autonomic ganglionopathy.
A rare neurological disease that attacked the nerves controlling the most basic human functions: heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, urination, temperature.

There was no cure.
No treatment.
Only the knowledge that it would get worse.

By twenty-two, she was told the truth no young woman should ever hear — her condition was terminal.
Her body was failing, slowly but surely.
Organ by organ.
System by system.

She does not fear the end.
She fears suffering.
She fears taking one more breath that feels like fire.
She fears the next infection that could torture her for hours before ending her life suddenly.
Having the choice means she has control — something illness stole from her long ago.

And now, for the first time in years, she feels calm.
Peaceful.
Like she is standing at the edge of a long, painful chapter, finally able to close it gently.

“I’m lucky,” she says.
“Not everyone gets to choose.
Not everyone gets to say goodbye the way they want.
I do.
And that means everything.”

When she turned eighteen and moved from paediatrics to adult care, doctors finally found the name for the monster destroying her life — autoimmune autonomic ganglionopathy.
A rare neurological disease that attacked the nerves controlling the most basic human functions: heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, urination, temperature.

There was no cure.
No treatment.
Only the knowledge that it would get worse.

By twenty-two, she was told the truth no young woman should ever hear — her condition was terminal.
Her body was failing, slowly but surely.
Organ by organ.
System by system.