Doors open for you in Diest when you're with Marieke
Vervoort.
Go to a restaurant in this pretty Belgian town, and all the
diners know her. They come over to congratulate her on winning two medals at
the 2016 Rio Paralympics; she raises a glass to a family celebrating a
birthday.
For a few hours, she's the life and soul of the party.
But, at 37, the Belgian wheelchair racer suffers such pain
she wakes her neighbours by screaming in the night. As she watches her
precious, fiercely defended independence dwindling, she has planned her own
death.
Euthanasia is legal in Belgium, and eight years ago Vervoort
signed the papers which will, eventually, allow a doctor to end her life. It's
not that she wants to die. She wants to live. But she wants to live on her
terms.
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