A 'devoted mother' who found her desperately ill daughter attempting suicide spent 28 hours administering lethal drugs after failing to convince her to live, a court heard today. Kay Gilderdale, 55, helped her daughter Lynn, 31, end the pain of severe myalgic encephalopathy (ME) at their home in Stonegate, east Sussex, Lewes Crown Court was told.
Gilderdale handed her daughter two syringes of morphine to self-administer. When that failed, she gave crushed antidepressants and sleeping pills, injected morphine into Lynn's intravenous line, and passed air bubbles into her vein to try to cause a fatal clot. At one point, she telephoned the assisted dying charity Exit for advice.
Lynn died 30 hours after calling her mother to her bedside, pleading: 'I want the pain to go. I don't want to go on.' The jury heard Gilderdale admits assisting suicide but denies attempted murder. Prosecutors argue her actions after the initial failed attempt were designed solely to end her daughter's life.
Lynn had been healthy until age 14, when a BCG vaccination triggered ME. She became bedridden, lost her ability to swallow, and relied on her mother for all care. In the year before her death, she had enquired about assisted dying in Switzerland and wrote a living will stating: 'I fear degeneration and indignity far more than I fear death.'
The final hours began on 3 December 2008, when Lynn tried to kill herself with morphine but called for help. Over 28 hours, Gilderdale neither ate nor slept as she helped her daughter die. Lynn died at 7.10am on 4 December, and Gilderdale was arrested on suspicion of murder.
