Yahoo News 'Every bad death is one death too many' say the Surrey women campaigning to legalise assisted dying
“Nobody should have to go through what we went through”, say two Surrey women whose husbands wanted to end their lives as they were left facing an impossibly difficult situation. With assisted dying currently illegal in the UK they looked towards Dignitas to give their loved ones the send off they wanted, but faced a secretive and lonely process. Now they hope others won't have to do the same.
The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill goes before MPs on Friday (November 29), starting what could be a long journey towards legalising assisted deaths for the terminally ill in England and Wales. For advocates, it can’t come soon enough.
Fran, lead campaigner for the West Surrey campaign group, told SurreyLive: “The current law, we believe, is both cruel and dangerous. At the minute you have a choice between not knowing if you're going to be one of those people that suffer at the end of their life, trying to find the money to go abroad, or unfortunately some people decide to take their own lives behind closed doors.”
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As part of Dignity in Dying, Fran has been working towards allowing mentally competent, terminally ill, adults to have a choice of an assisted death at the end of their life for some time.
Her group is right behind the bill, which they believe will bring comfort towards those nearing the end of their life. While there has been debate on who should be allowed to make this choice Fran believes the proposed legislation has the right safeguards in place. She explained: “The first stage would be the person has to make a declaration to say this is what I want to do. That has to be witnessed both by a doctor and by an independent witness. So not a relative, not somebody who stands to gain, somebody who's apart from the process. They then need to get agreement from two doctors, seven days apart. So, two different doctors have to declare that you meet the criteria.
“Then it goes before a high court judge, who can question everybody concerned in the process to make sure they are satisfied that all the conditions have been met. Then a second declaration has to be made 14 days after that judgement. There are some exceptions, if the person is expected to die much more quickly than this process allows, but that should be very much the exception, not the rule. Only after all of that has happened and the second declaration has been signed, will the doctor be able to provide the substances to enable the person to end their own life.”
For Helen, the bill would have made the world of difference. Her husband, Nick was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in July 2018. She said: “As far as we were concerned he was completely well. He was 61, full of life, really dynamic, raring to go, and had hardly been to the doctor in his entire life. Then overnight he was told he had really aggressive brain tumours, the prognosis of which was grim.”
“Right from the word go Nick took the view that he wanted to control the manner of his dying. He wanted to be able to determine his own death. He was a proud man, supremely independent. To be ill. To have lost some of his faculties, some of what made him Nick, it was not what he wanted.
The couple applied to Dignitas and were given the provisional green light. However in April 2019 Nick was told that he had two to three months to live. Helen said: “At that time, I don't recall us even thinking about going off to Dignitas, it was going to be too big a step, you have to fly to Switzerland. I think we were all traumatised.”
Nick spent the last 10 days of his life in a hospice, with his wife and dog. Helen recalled: “By that point, Nick had been saying every single day to every single person, every single medical professional who came across, he’d say I’ve had enough now, you need to sort this out, I want to die. That was a consistent refrain.
“Dying can be hard. There was no benefit to him or to me or to anyone for what he went through, what he endured. When you're in that situation it's about doing what is compassionate for the individual. At the end of the day, for me, it more than anything comes down to being a civilised compassionate society. This stuff really, really matters and every bad death is one death too many.”
Helen knows that this legislation could have made the end of Nick’s life easier. She said: “That would have been the choice he would have made. It would have happened at home. He wouldn't have deteriorated to the extent he did, which was to a level, which was in every way unacceptable. In those last 48 hours, he wouldn't have been able to articulate his sheer horror. He was too unwell by that point, but I know that he would have been horrified."
“It's not what you choose for anyone. One day it could be you or one of yours, and you want the very best for them. You’d want them to have that freedom of choice.”
While Helen did not ultimately go to Dignitas, Ann did. Her husband Patrick was diagnosed with Motor Neurone disease in 2008 and had repeatedly attempted to take his own life before he decided to go to Switzerland. Patrick wanted to die in the UK, but ended up applying to Dignitas when he felt he had no alternative.
Ann told SurreyLive: “It was such a weight lifted off our shoulders. He didn't want to die, but this was going to be the lesser of two evils. When we got over to Switzerland, they were so lovely, they treated him with respect. It is such a fabulous experience when you’ve come from all the secrecy and difficulties here and nobody giving you any help. They treated him with dignity.
“We looked on it as a holiday. We had fabulous weather, we had a lovely family time together, despite the fact that we knew why we were there. It's a lovely garden, and we sat outside, Patrick in his wheelchair, me sitting next to him holding his hand. It was not what he wanted but what he needed in order for the misery of his life to come to an end. It's just a pity that it was in Switzerland and not in England, which it should have been.”
“After about an hour we said he was ready. They came over with the poison, which they told him would be bitter. He took the draught and started to say thank you but he never got the words fully out. I told him I loved him but before he even finished the draught, his head had gone on one side and he was just as if he was asleep. There was absolutely nothing unpleasant about it.”
A few months after Ann came back to the UK she was questioned by police, but ultimately no charges were ever brought. She said: " I knew why they were coming. My only concern was to try and highlight the barbaric law that exists here for any of anybody in Patrick's situation. For the amount of people like me who are prepared to actually talk about it, there are far more people suffering, daily in absolutely excruciating pain."
Like Helen, she believes having the option to end his life in the UK would have massively helped her husband. She said: “I cannot tell you the difference it would have made . If you haven’t got the opportunity of knowing you can have an assisted death, your end is going to be awful. There are two many people who are having really horrendous deaths, and why should you, it's your life.”
MPs have the first opportunity to debate and vote on the proposed law on Friday. If it passes it will be subject to further debate before potentially becoming law.
