I have written about this once before but I feel it is useful to write again on this subject as it is now coming closer to being legislated for in this country. My mother died of cancer in great pain and the only comfort she got was the support of the wonderful Marie Curie nurses and their palliative care. If she had had the legal choice, my mother would have gladly asked for assisted dying. We even discussed it together. In her later days I moved in with my mother and was there with her 24/7 with the support of the nurses until she died. We both went to sleep, I kissed her goodnight and made sure she was comfortable. I stayed with her until she was asleep and then I went to bed.
When I woke up I went to check on her and to give her a cup of tea and discovered that she had died. I had to call a doctor and the surgery sent a locum. He asked me if my mother had died alone and I explained that I was living with her and my husband would visit me. I was taking up her cup of tea and she must have died in her sleep. So the doctor said that she had died alone. I explained that I had moved in with her to care for her. He asked me if I was in the room when she died. I said that I was not in the room but I was in the house. He said that he would have to put on the death certificate that she had died alone. I was distraught and when the doctor left and my husband arrived, I could not stop crying. The doctor had made me feel that I was a neglectful daughter.
With assisted dying, my mother and I would have chosen a time to die with her family around her. It was from that moment that I knew I had to join Dignitas, their slogan being,
Live with Dignity and die with Dignity.
However, due to British law, if my family accompanied me to Switzerland, they would have been charged with manslaughter on their return. Our law is a cruel mess.
There is a further point to consider,called My death, my decision. The law the British government is proposing is only with terminal illness with the last few months left of life. The My Death, My Decision organisation wants to, if you have Motor Neurone Disease, for example, and your suffering is continuous and unbearable, give you the right to decide to take the right to die.
People should have the right to oppose it. There is no need for disabled people to feel threatened unless they become terminally ill in which case they have the right to choose assisted dying.
There are so many problems concerned with dying in general. Very often , doctors do not tell the truth. Ella Creamer’s mother was lied to by the doctor. She was told that she would die gently and just slip away. “By the time she did die, on 30th March 2020, she had endured 8 months of pain, seizures, confusion, increasing paralysis and other challenging symptoms, compounded by a decreasing ability to communicate how she felt.”.
Care homes/hospices are often ill-equipped for palliative care except for the charity-run homes, like Marie Curie.
In Switzerland, there is no slippery slope of people being forced to use assisted dying because it is a civilised society where the vulnerable are respected and cared for and where good palliative care medicine thrives. The Swiss are at ease with their laws.
In our country, end of life care is a postcode lottery, nothing to do with compassion. In Canada, there are problems also where they have assisted dying because people have chosen to die for dreadful reasons like abject poverty or poor disability allowances. Like our country, a lack of compassion due to poor life finances.
Julian Barnes, the writer, had his wife die in agony and with the doctor giving incorrect information, thinking he knew it all.
“ For many years I remembered that enthusiastic news-bringer with some bitterness.”
Esther Rantzen had 3 deaths in her family within a few months., her mother, her husband and her rescue dog. She said that she envied the dog’s death,” a peaceful, pain-free, easiest death, gently put down and surrounded by family”. It was her mother and her husband who suffered. We always treat animals better than we do people.
Susan Hampshire said, “I believe dying should be a choice the individual makes.”
We are not yet a humane and compassionate nation.
However things are changing which is why I will no longer have to be a member of Dignitas, which if I needed to use it, would cost me £15000. I don’t have that kind of money. We perhaps do not have to think of, Suffering, Switzerland, Suicide.
This is because Jersey has agreed to have assisted dying and the Isle of Man and Scotland are about to legislate in favour. A lethal concoction and it’s legal.
The BMA has now come out in support. Doctors can make their own decision and choice whether to help or not to help a patient die. No doctor is to be compelled to help. People with religious beliefs will have the right to oppose the changes.
There are people who are very anti assisted dying as they say that their families could kill them when they don’t need to do so, whether it is for money or property. That is extremely unlikely and it is really a worst case scenario. What I would say is that if we did not legislate because of any worst case scenario we would not have any laws or justice at all.
