I’ve been listening to a debate on Radio 4 about the subject of Assisted Dying i.e. the right for a person with a terminal diagnosis to end their own life. For me, having seen what I’ve seen, having read of so much end of life suffering on here, I would very much welcome that option for myself in the future.
I’m wondering what others on here might think?
Just to be clear, I’m not advocating suicide.
I would support and accept it tomorrow. Without my wife,the reason for everything I did for so many years I have no wish to spend day after day after day feeling like this.
I agree completely, what is life at present other than constant pain and suffering. Without our partners I feel there is no point in life.
@miker sorry I know how you feel. I felt like that too, it’s a really difficult place to be. I was talking of assisted dying in the context of a terminal medical diagnosis due to physical illness.
I went through end of life with my partner 6 1/2 months ago and had no idea beforehand what it entailed and just how horrific it is and inhumane
If a dog is in pain and suffering you have it put down.
A human being end of life process, cut all food and fluids, put in a syringe driver for pain meds, a catheter and wait for each one of their internal organs to shut down one by one until they die, however long that takes.
I nursed my partner at home through her illness and end of life and didn’t sleep for those 3 days as I was petrified I wouldn’t be there when she passed, so watched each step of the end of life process in detail and it’s horrific
I don’t buy this "it’s worse for the onlookers than the person dying " yarn that gets spun - each case is different and how do they know - someone came back and told them??
Assisted dying should be a right of the person to decide if they have a terminal illness.
Currently, Switzerland is only place that offers this to foreigners and under UK law, if I had taken her to Switzerland for assisted dying, i would have been arrested and charged with manslaughter on my return to UK.
Implications of this are if you have a terminal illness and want to go the assisted dying route, you have to go it alone and people with a terminal illnesses are going to Switzerland months and months before they would need to, to end their life because they are worried if they wait they will be too ill to make the trip
There has to be checks and balances as it could be open to abuse in the case of medical power of attorney etc
But fundamentally, if the person has a terminal illness approaching end of life with no hope and are of sound mind, they should be able to make the decision for themselves
Bit of a rant, but I was neither prepared nor had even thought about end of life until I was in the middle of it, and it’s horrific and inhumane
I couldn’t agree more with you, well said. I went through the same thing, watching my wife die over four days with onl;y needless stuck in her, afraid to even use the toilet in case I missed her passing. It IS inhumane and needs to be changed. Believe me, i wanted her alive for every second and she fought like mad to the end. I remember her saying " I don’t want to die because I love you" ( sorry crying again now), but in the end I had to say “it’s time to go my darling, but take with you all my loive forever”. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done and she passed shortly after.
@MemoriesOfUs I feel exactly the same, it wasn’t until I had to witness what it meant to face death and have someone be able to relate that to me that I ever really understood what lies before us all. I want to be able to have that option, I don’t know if I would use it but I want it to be available. As you say there has to be checks and powers of attorney involved, but it’s ridiculous that even booking a flight to Switzerland would constitute an offence. The problem at the moment seems to be that there’s general support but a general unwillingness to have a widespread conversation. It really is something that needs to be addressed sooner than later
I agree, it should be the person’s own decision. Having seen it up close I too came away with a sick feeling in my stomach, even more convinced that it isn’t in any way humane. Just the way they casually talked about having a set combination of drugs to administer for pain, hallucinations and anxiety was horrible.
Agree with you would want this for myself if needed in future think it should be our right to decide if we want to die if we are unfortunate to get terminal diagnosis
My partner also fought to the bitter end - she went into end of life on the Thursday - on the Monday morning before, she demanded to be taken to the hospital, despite not being able to stand by herself, to have her chemo, even though they had told her she couldn’t because of her blood work.
She wouldn’t have gone the assisted dying route, but the option should be available and it should be that person’s decision
I had hoped, like most I imagine, when all hope was lost, she would die peacefully in her sleep, but it was not to be
This is all so very sad and it’s about time the law was changed. So much for a humane society.
@Ian6 it’s the most horrific soul destroying thing to see.
After everything she went through - misery and pain of fighting the cancer, she at least deserved a peaceful, tranquil end and not the brutal end of life process
Life is cruel
@MemoriesOfUs My wife was the same, took it as far as she could. Having seen what I did, and having been in my shoes, I wonder if she would have done. My wife never watched me die as I did her, it changes you seeing that, seeing what it can be like. I feel it has changed how I will face things, time will tell.
@Walan I agree, you have to witness it to understand and it completely changes your perspective
Maybe a cowards way, but if I have a terminal diagnosis with no hope, I’m calling it a day one way or the other
I watched her fight and endure more pain than anyone can fathom - 8 months consecutive chemo, op removing/partially removing 8 internal organs, stoma and colostomy bag, agonizing liver biopsies - and for what?
@MemoriesOfUs Why do we think that fighting on in the face of the inevitable is something we have to do? Well for me, as with you, it was because I never truly understood what that entailed, I only understand what it means now because I’ve lived that, and I always will. The perspective I gained is something I never really want to pass on, perhaps as time goes forward my attitude will change. I would never see opting for assisted dying as the cowardly path, for me it would save those around me the horror of the alternative.
Ironically now, given my thoughts on assisted dying, I never once thought about it during her illness and pushed her to fight every step of the way.
Even the month before she died and was in hospital, barely able to walk across the room, I was consulting with a liver surgeon in India to have a liver transplant as her living donor.
I knew her health had reached a critical mass point, but was still holding on to some hope she might just improve enough to have the transplant.
I think part of it is coping mechanism - you just can’t deal with the reality. I refused to discuss funerals or anything about her dying as I saw it as giving up
In the cold hard retrospective light of day, once it had spread to her liver with multiple tumours, there wasn’t really any hope, but at the time that wasn’t a possibility I could even consider - we were going to beat it
@MemoriesOfUs I know. We did very much the same, even though she had small cell lung cancer and there is really nothing they can do with that. But we tried, I tried, she tried, there’s always some way to find a hidden path to hope. Assisted dying, to be very honest, was something I thought she may ask for, she watched her dad die from mesothelioma and was terrified of the pain. Like yourself we didn’t discuss much about what she wanted, it was very much her choice, live for the day, hope for the best. Now I don’t know if I would do the same, I’ve seen how it plays out, I read about it every day on this site, it happens over and over again, for me I think she’d be happy if I chose a different way.
I was trying to buy her time and try manage the disease in the hope that there would be some sort of breakthrough in next couple of years
A new drug immunotherapy drug called Dostarlimab came out in 2022/2023 that seemed to have massive success rates in phase 1 trials, but the cancer had to have DNA mismatch repair deficiency.
I pushed her to have an agonizing liver biopsy for this, and she didn’t have the deficiency so drug wouldn’t have worked. Again, for what? Hope - it’s all you have at that stage
I hear you on the morphine - she was on high doses of oxycodone as morphine had stopped working
With hindsight I would have asked if she wanted to go that route, knowing what I know now
For me personally, it’s a very emotive subject, the choice would not only just apply to the individual concerned but affect all their loved one’s.
Is it also playing ‘god’?
I had to put my 15yr old dog to sleep 5mths ago and the pain and heartbreak was equal to losing my partner. I had to process why I felt this way as it was done with love to end his suffering but the trauma was awful and the answer for me was is it did not feel right for me to be making the decision to end any life let alone the dog I loved more than life. It felt morally wrong. Human beings have an instinct to survive, yes just like animals, it’s born within us. We also nurture life. Would anyone end their child’s life in the same circumstance which is to end their suffering? The problem with both humans and dogs is in this day and age we over medicate to prolong life, knowing the outcome eventually is death. Death is nature and should we interfere with it? We are bereaved and obviously watching a loved one die is traumatic. Did any of your loved one’s express their wish to be able to end their own life?
I personally am totally against it for many, many reasons but I do get the discussion