B.C. woman dies by MAID at 49 after young-onset Alzheimer’s diagnosis: ‘This was chosen for me’

A 49-year-old B.C. woman who documented her experience with young-onset Alzheimer’s disease has died after she was approved for medical assistance in dying (MAID).

Rebecca Luna, a mother of two from Victoria, B.C., died at approximately 1:15 p.m. on July 25, according to a post on the TikTok account where she described the disease and what it was doing to her to more than 97,000 followers. She called herself a young-onset Alzheimer’s and MAID advocate.

Maya Findlay, Luna’s eldest daughter, posted a tribute to her mother on TikTok on Monday.

“I miss my mom in a way that feels like homesickness. Like I just want to go home, but home was her,” Findlay wrote in a TikTok post alongside a screen recording of Luna on a video call.

Luna was diagnosed at 48, she wrote on a fundraiser page in June. She first noticed cognitive decline at 46.

“Young onset Alzheimer’s has nothing to do with what you expect from somebody with Alzheimer’s that’s 80 years old,” she said in a video posted four days before she died. She said it was hard not to be bothered by the fact that she looked too good to be terminally ill. In an interview with Yahoo Life in May 2025, she said she originally attributed her symptoms of forgetfulness to stress, perimenopause and ADHD, but was eventually diagnosed by a neurologist.

In July 2025, Luna posted a video saying she had met with a MAID doctor.

“You get to choose when you go and how much suffering you deem to be too much suffering. And we sat down and kind of wrote out a list of the things that I’m not willing to put up with, or what kind of quality of life I’d like to leave the world with,” she said, adding that everybody’s standard is different. She reported that she was rapidly declining and wanted to die before she got to the point where she couldn’t remember her family.

“I want to leave the world where I still feel laughter and joy and fun, and I don’t want to have a caregiver, and I’m already struggling with paperwork and managing basic daily tasks,” she said.

Heather Cooke, manager of research and knowledge mobilization at the Alzheimer Society of B.C. and Yukon, spoke to  National Post about what the disease does to people diagnosed young. Dementia is the set of symptoms, she said, and Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of them.

“When we think of people living with dementia, our brain often goes to the 85 year old,” Cooke said. “Our brain doesn’t go to the 60 year old or the 65 year old.”

About 28,000 people in Canada are living with young-onset dementia, Cooke said, citing an Alzheimer Society of Canada estimate. In B.C. the number is roughly 4,500, and she said it is expected to pass 6,000 within 20 years.

“The national average is around two years from the onset of symptoms to receiving a formal diagnosis,” Cooke said, adding that Canada’s wait is among the longest in wealthy nations.

Symptoms are easier to miss at that age. “Often they are people who are still working. They are often at an age when they’re at the pinnacle of their career,” Cooke said.

The Alzheimer Society of Canada lists 10 possible signs of dementia. They include memory changes that affect day-to-day abilities, difficulty doing familiar tasks, disorientation in time and place and misplacing things.

The isolation is different at that age too. “It’s a life-altering diagnosis, to receive that in your 40s and your 50s and your early 60s, when all of your friends are living very different lives,” Cooke said.

Luna wrote on a fundraiser page in January that her neurologist had given her five to seven years. She was raising money for a first and last trip with her daughters. The timeline moved in her favour once. In a February update she wrote that she had pushed her MAID date further into the year. “Such good news,” she wrote. “Still progressing as steadily as before I’m just moving the goal post.”

By June she had opened a second fundraiser, for her end-of-life expenses. “I’m 49 and I will be accessing MAID as my decline has come faster than I had hoped,” she wrote, adding that she did not want to leave her family the cost of funeral expenses on top of their grief.

In the July 21 video, Luna said she was exactly two weeks out from her MAID appointment, which set her date for early August. The disease was taking her mind, her feelings and her connections, she said, and had brought night terrors and delusions. “I’ve spent the last few days just in bed sleeping,” she said. “I’ve just been crying for a week.”

In her final video, posted the next day, Luna said the date had moved again, to July 25, and that her palliative care doctor had been at her home telling her the decision belonged to her. “She said, when would you go if it was just your choice? And I said, now,” Luna said. “And so we called and the hospital had an opening for Saturday at 10 o’clock.”

She added: “It’s a hard decision to make, I have to tell you, because I’m living in a body that doesn’t feel comfortable, safe, good, nothing.”

Under the Criminal Code, a person must have decision-making capacity to receive MAID and must consent immediately before it is provided, according to Justice Canada. That final consent can be waived only in narrow circumstances, and only where a person’s natural death is already reasonably foreseeable.

“I’m not choosing this. This was chosen for me,” Luna said in the final video. “I didn’t wake up and think, ‘whoa, I would love to have young onset Alzheimer’s at the age of 46.’ With two children? No.”

Findlay, Luna’s daughter, posted a message to the June fundraiser confirming the death. “Thank you for all the love, support and privacy,” she wrote. The page had raised $11,766 of a $20,000 goal as of Tuesday evening.

In her final video, Luna said there was one thing she hoped people took from her. “You just need to act your way into loving yourself,” she said. “If I can do it, you can do it, too.”