My wife, Katherine White, who has died aged 63 of an aortic dissection, was a campaigner for people with Addison’s disease, a rare endocrine condition where the adrenal glands cease to function and the body no longer produces enough essential steroid hormones.
Following her own diagnosis with the condition in 1998, Katherine devoted much of the rest of her life to deepening her understanding of Addison’s and to supporting people’s management of it.
Born in Hamilton, New Zealand, to John White, one of the founders of Auckland University’s computing centre, and his wife, Gwenda (nee Sheat), a chemistry teacher, Katherine went to Takapuna grammar school in Auckland before completing a degree in French and political science and then a master’s in political science at Auckland University, either side of a year as editor of the student newspaper.
She then became an assistant lecturer at Auckland University, moving on in the late 1980s to be research officer and press secretary to Michael Cullen, minister for social welfare in David Lange’s Labour government.
When the party lost office after two terms, Katherine took roles in corporate affairs and paralegal research before joining the Sydney office of McKinsey, the management consultancy, in 1992 as an organisational effectiveness and communication specialist.
In 1994 she moved to McKinsey’s office in London, which is where we met for the first time, she being the only person to arrive for the first session of our week-long induction later than me.
Katherine left McKinsey in 1996, the year we got married, but continued as a communication consultant, moving to be a principal at William M Mercer. By that time, however, she was increasingly struggling with fatigue and nausea, and she left in 1998 after her Addison’s diagnosis.
It was then that she joined the UK Addison’s Disease Self-Help Group (ADSHG), eventually becoming coordinator of the ADSHG’s Clinical Advisory Panel and then chair of the group itself, for 14 years. During this time she enlisted the help of many other people, including medics, and built up a clinical advisory panel of leading endocrinologists. She also established ties with similar groups across the UK and internationally, and moved the ADSHG into charitable status.
She established, and wrote, a stream of publications and online resources, always with expert medical input, to help people live with the disease, including Living With Addison’s: An Owner’s Manual, with Sarah Baker.
Katherine left the group in 2018 to start a PhD in medical sociology at the University of Würzburg in Germany, looking at the management of Addison’s disease and similar chronic conditions. She had almost finished her doctorate at the time of her death.
In parallel to her PhD, she joined a Facebook support group, the UK Addison’s Disease & AI Info & Support Group, rapidly becoming one of its “go to” experts (as Kat Mackay).
Outside her work on Addison’s Katherine loved to be in her garden in Hertford, initially completely reshaping it after we moved there in 2004 by demolishing an old summer house, planting an array of fruit trees and putting in a range of raised beds, and continuing to tweak and tend it over the following years.
She is survived by me, our two children, Eleanor and Patrick, her mother, and sisters Annie and Nicola.
