The last meal for Anna Hill: 'This has ruined my life'

Nicole Mathewson Reporter from Dunedin News

By reporter Hamish McNeilly:

Anna Hill remembers her last meal.

It was a salmon benedict at a Dunedin café, back in October 2021.

She hasn’t eaten a proper meal since, but can barely drink water.

‘’I can’t even move without regurgitating. Animals get put down for less.’’

When Hill was pregnant with her youngest, she started experienced chest pains whenever she ate or drank anything,

‘’It’s just horrendously painful when I was eating.’’

But it got worse, much worse.

Fifteen minutes after giving birth to her youngest, she deteriorated and could no longer swallow and was ‘nil by mouth’.

With food and drink struggling to go down, she would often vomit, requiring an ever-present bucket to be by her side.

‘’I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t work,’’ the former hospital nurse said.

‘’I want to go back to my old job, but I can’t even swallow my own saliva.’’

The 38-year-old mother-of-four has no energy to take her youngest child to the park, for a walk, or even hold her for any extended period.

Hill has to constantly pounding her chest to alleviate the pain.

’’I have no quality of life, this has ruined my life.’’

After the birth of her daughter 19-months ago, she found the pain persisted coupled with an inability to sleep.

After the birth of her daughter the pain persisted, but was compounded by her inability to sleep.

Constantly dehydrated and unable to breastfeed her baby daughter, she again sought a diagnosis from her doctor, who she had visited dozens of times over the issue.

Visits to specialists confirmed she had a rare disease, with the majority of muscles in her oesophagus, which connects the throat to the stomach, effectively dead.

While Hill no longer felt hungry, she often felt thirsty, but the pain of trying to drink made that a difficult task as ‘’my throat just shuts’’.

While her specialists were talking about the possibility of surgery, they had parked that plan in favour of a temporary feeding tube, which she would receive next week.

But Hill wanted an operation to restore her oesophagus, and started to look overseas for options.

’’I can’t afford to wait.’’

She found a surgeon in Delhi, India who could treat her by making a new oesophagus out of her stomach, followed by three weeks’ recuperation.

That would hopefully lead to Hill being able to eat and drink like normal, and she is unequivocal about what she would like.

‘’If I could have anything I would have a cup of coffee.’’

But unable to get a loan because she was unemployed, a friend of Hill’s created a Givealittle page, which had raised just under $4000 of the $25,000 goal.

’’I’ve lost everything. Literally I’ve lost everything. All my savings has been spent on medications and doctor’s visits.

‘’I’ve lost my career . . . I’ve lost everything.’’

Her three older children, who lost their father in a motor vehicle crash on Christmas Day in 2021, were worried they were about to lose their mother.

‘’It has been a real s... time.’’

‘’Imagine not getting up in the morning and not having a sip of coffee or tea, or anything, that is like me every day.’’

‘’I’ve spent two Christmases unable to eat or drink, and I am just over it.’’

Homebound, she had lost 38kgs and was now just over 50kg, with little energy left for basic tasks.

Unable to eat or drink she had lost some 38 kilograms, and was now down to just over 50kg.

‘’I just sit here and dribble into a towel, or a bucket,’’ Hill says as she pounds her chest.