Lynette "Lynn" Gilderdale (20 September 1977 – 4 December 2008), also known on the internet as Jessie Oliver,[1] was a British woman with a severely diminished quality of life from chronic fatigue syndrome (referred to as myalgic encephalomyelitis in the United Kingdom) who died by suicide after taking a morphine overdose after she decided she no longer wanted to endure the pain from the illness.
The illness progressed rapidly, and from accounts by her mother, within six months "she was totally bedridden, unable to lift her head off the pillow, or care for herself in any way at all.
[5] Lynn Gilderdale appeared in the media on various occasions during her illness, and features without being named in various printed literature on CFS, such as the book The New Plague by Jane Colby (First and Best in Education, 1996).
Gilderdale remained bedridden, unable to speak or swallow, in constant pain and suffering other debilitating symptoms for the whole of the period from mid-1992 to her death in December 2008.
On one such occasion in late 2005, her lung was punctured during an operation at Conquest Hospital, Hastings, to replace a Hickman line, resulting in her ending up on life support.
She did survive, but Lynn found the experience traumatic and she subsequently expressed the wish not to be resuscitated in case of future similar circumstances.
[9] However, her paralysis partly receded, the family were able to take care of her medical needs at home and reduce her hospital admissions to two or three per year, and her memory improved, enabling her to re-learn to read and to type.
Kay's prosecution for attempted murder hinged on her actions during those hours, as she gave the family doctor the impression that she had injected Lynn with air, to cause a fatal embolism and with the antidepressant Sertraline.
[14] On the third day, the prosecution told the jury that Kay had searched the Internet for various suicide-related phrases in between Lynn's overdose and her death.