YouTuber Max Gilardi said he is considering undergoing assisted suicide in Switzerland due to his ongoing struggles with fibromyalgia and other health concerns, saying it is too expensive for him to continue receiving treatment.
Key Takeaways:
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Max Gilardi is a YouTuber, voice actor, and animator known for making parody videos.
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He announced that he was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in 2024.
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During a recent livestream, Gilardi said his struggle with fibromyalgia and other health issues has become debilitating, and that he is struggling to afford treatment.
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Gilardi said he plans to fly to Switzerland to undergo assisted suicide, though he later said he would “reassess” his plan.
The Details:
Gilardi is a popular YouTuber, animator, and voice actor known for gaming content and parody videos. He previously announced that he was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in 2024. Fibromyalgia is a chronic condition known for causing pain throughout the body, fatigue, and trouble sleeping. It can also be associated with other issues, like irritable bowel syndrome, headaches, jaw and facial pain, and mental health issues. It’s also known to cause brain fog, which sufferers refer to as “fibro fog.” There are treatments that can help, but there is currently no cure.
In an August 2 livestream, Gilardi told followers he has recently been struggling with his health, describing constantly feeling tired, having “bad pain” in every joint and his muscles. He said that he has “a lot of difficulty sleeping, especially during a flare-up” of his condition.
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He described having “a restless night” “maybe once or twice a week,” and his body’s temperature regulation isn’t functioning well at all. “I might not be able to sleep, because I feel like my skin is boiling or my body is itchy, but like painful itchy, like I’m being stabbed by tiny needles,” he said, adding, “I feel as if I’ve lost a big chunk of my brain power. I can’t think right anymore. It’s hard to explain, but it’s like my mind has been hollowed out.”
He added that his brain often feels like it’s lagging, and that he can’t process information or control how he’s speaking. The brain fog, he said, has also made it difficult to complete simple tasks, and that simply sitting and reading a book is difficult and taxing.
He also said he has begun having trouble breathing normally, because he feels he’s not bringing in enough air with each breath.
But that isn’t the end of the symptoms he’s been struggling with:
“Most mysteriously, the bane of my existence, my true ruination, I have a condition that I have dubbed slobber mouth. My mouth is always drooling. My throat is always producing mucus, which is why I have that squeaky puberty voice now.
My throat is also scratchy and sore, probably because I have to clear it all the time. I have a big wad of goo in my nasopharynx. The inside of my mouth and my tongue feel puffy and raw and swollen and numb and tingly. So imagine rubbing sandpaper on your tongue until it feels like raw and spongy and puffy.
I have a metallic taste a lot of the time, like coins or pennies or whatever. I spit all day. I can spit it or I can swallow it, but it just fills right back up again in two seconds. It also feels like if I spit or swallow it too much, that’ll start making it worse. That’ll agitate it. On at least one occasion, I woke up in the middle of the night choking on it. When it gets really bad, I have to sit on the couch and hold a bowl under my mouth, and I just let it drip dry while I watch TV.”
He explained that he has tried diet change, including cutting out dairy, gluten, and sugar, as well as looking into allergic causes, but that nothing seems to help. And it has begun affecting his ability to work.
“All of these are symptoms that impact my ability to speak, and speaking is my job,” he said. “A job that should have been easy has become very, very difficult for me… Usually when I stream, I do my best to try to be silly, as a streamer would have to do, but most of the time I’m just sitting here thinking, you know, I feel terrible, I feel terrible, I feel terrible.”
He added that he has additional health problems that he’s had “since middle school,” including anxiety, a calcified disc in his neck, and headaches. Recently, he said, he’s developed tinnitus.
“It’s as if the universe itself looked at me and said, oh look, we missed a spot,” he said. “He still has one sensory input that’s left unmolested.”
Zoom In:
Gilardi said he is unable to afford treatment, saying he has paid $900 for an MRI, only for doctors to say the scan is inconclusive.
“I can’t really afford to go to the doctor anymore,” he said. “They’re never really able to help me anyway. They’ve done a lot of tests over the past two years, but they’re usually inconclusive. They’re like, yeah, you look fine. Every time.”
He said he has multiple medical bills he’s unable to pay and that some have gone to collection. Some, he’s had to pay with his credit cards.
Describing the situation as a “personal hell,” he concluded that the only solution he could think of is assisted suicide. However, fibromyalgia is not a terminal illness and doesn’t qualify anywhere in the United States. He’s also unable to get Canadian citizenship for the purpose of ending his life. Because of this, he set his sights on Switzerland, a country known for its death tourism. But even that, he says, is cost-prohibitive:
“I found out that being euthanized in Switzerland can cost up to like $17,000. So now I feel like I’m taking crazy pills here. Like, why is everything being made so difficult for me here? Am I going to have to start a GoFundMe for like $30,000 instead? I was worried that people wouldn’t want to give me $10,000. Nobody’s going to donate $30,000 to kill a man.
… But you know, if you think dying is expensive, imagine how expensive it would be for me to live for another two to three decades. That would be really expensive. There’s nothing more expensive than living.”
Still, he said he would find a way to make it happen, because he said he couldn’t see any other options. “No matter how many times I run this giant equation in my head, I just keep getting the same answer. I mean, I know it’s right and I know that it’s time.”
The Reaction:
However, his followers across YouTube and social media reacted with heartbreak and horror, and urged him to not give up. Many donated money, explicitly saying they hoped it would help him obtain health care so he can reach a more “manageable state,” and at least one commenter with fibromyalgia encouraged him not to see death as his only option.
“I have had fibromyalgia for over 40 years. I know what it’s like to wake up every day in pain, knowing it likely will never go away,” said one commenter. “But I beg of you to reconsider, and don’t do anything rash. Death is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.”
Another wrote, “… Your symptoms describe a thyroid condition to a T. All those symptoms sound like undiagnosed and untreated hashimoto’s. Depression, joint pain, temp regulation issues, extreme fatigue, saliva issues, ringing in ear, all of it. I know because I have hashimotos. treated with synthetic thyroid hormones which is dirt cheap. If thats what you have get it treated and you’d be amazed how it fixes so much.”
Many people reached out urging him to “stay strong” and keep on living.
Following the outcry, Gilardi said he will reconsider the plan to die, writing that he feels he is not “thinking clearly.”
The Bottom Line:
Gilardi’s example shows the difference that support can make for people who are struggling and see no hope of a better future. Unfortunately, too many people feel death is their only option, and the people around them simply stand back and let it happen, rather than offering support and assuring them that — even with an illness or disability — life is still worth living.
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