Mother admits ending sons life

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I'm not sure how I feel about this?
On the one hand she didn't want to see her son suffer anymore. But surely a 7 year old when he asked his mom to take the pain away didn't mean to end his life?

Sorry if there is already a thread going I haven't checked

So sorry @FatmanandKnobbin 💐

@FatmanandKnobbin your post made me cry. So sorry to read about your beautiful daughter. I agree with every word you wrote.

This is not always possible.

Same. That took incredible courage and infinite love.

Same, I would hope too that there is soon a way I can make my wishes known whilst i'm still lucid and healthy enough to do so, so that when the time comes my family don't have to make the decision.

I think the issue of assisted suicide needs re-visiting, if we allowed this to happen to our dogs we'd be called cruel and abusive.

My great gran was on her 'deathbed' for 6 days, she suffered so so much, it was absolutely traumatic for all involved.

Most people who are dying of terminal cancer tend to die of a morphine overdose. Policy dictates that the dose of painkillers is sufficient to control the pain.
If the dose needed to control their pain is likely to end their life then there is not much you can do.
If you have witnessed the pain people suffer as their body is engulfed by cancer then the choice is very simple.
It really isn’t a very dignified and comfortable death without pain relief. No quietly slipping away surrounded by your family. Thanks to the teams that deal with end of life it is a much more comfortable process than 40yrs ago.
It’s likely that the mum was instructed to give morphine until the pain was bearable. Whether she knew it would end her child’s life, only she knows, but somewhere buried deep inside every mother is the ability to end suffering. All mammals possess the instinct/compassion it is just our consciousness and ethics that stops us and the eternal promise of modern medicine to attempt to fix the unfixable.

I can't get out of my head the fact that she's had to carry that round with her for 40 years. What a terrible burden.

Letting people suffer is not just cruel to the person dying. It is cruel to the people tho love them - who either have to watch them die in agony, or who do what this poor woman did and then have to live with a kind of lonely guilt that must also be agony.

When are we going to get a grip and change the law?

I watched my grandma die. It took two very long weeks. The drugs did not work. What was the point of all that suffering? She had terminal cancer - she was never going to do anything other than die.

I can only think that those who are squeamish about it have never witnessed someone they love die of cancer. Pretending it's not a problem doesn't make it go away: people are dying in pain and agony, every day, watched by their helpless, traumatised, loved ones.

This woman did a beautiful and a brave thing.

I'm terrified of ending up dying a slow, painful, undignified death.

I'd like to think I'd have the courage to do for my loved ones who think the same way as me what this poor woman did for her son.

If someone has religious beliefs about the sanctity of life that means they disagree, I'll defend their right to those beliefs, and to make choices about the end of their own lives, so far as that's possible. Not to force other people who don't share those beliefs to suffer in agony long past the point where we'd say it would be right and merciful to put down an animal. To me, that's downright evil.

Do not judge this woman unless you have had an identical experience. It sounds like she did the morally right thing, tbh.

The doctrine of double effects means that giving a potentially fatal dose of pain relief with the intention to relieve pain and NOT cause the death of a person, is permissible.

So how do we protect the vulnerable if we change the law to permit assisted suicide/euthanasia? No one can satisfactorily answer this question. But we can AND SHOULD be giving people who are in pain sufficient pain (and other) medication.

The biggest issue is the lack of good quality palliative care and into that void why, oh why, are we advocating for people being helped to die instead of being provided with care?

And the pet example everyone parrots is nonsense. We do plenty of things to pets we would never ordinarily do to humans (including putting them to sleep because the treatment would be too expensive - surely the opposite of what we would want to achieve here).

I watched my mum slowly die of septicaemia and muscular dystrophy, she was out of it on morphine and still in pain, I would have gladly helped her not suffer if I could have.

This woman did this with pure love for her son, to stop your child being in pain is something all parents hope they can do for their child

Shipman had a terrible, terrible effect on society and how we treat the dying, far beyond the murders of his patients.

However, it also shows the problem thinking we can just be "compassionate" towards those who, for excellent reasons, provide the means to end their loved one's suffering. It exposes those involved to being judged as not having good enough reasons (based on what criteria? Does everyone get judged fairly?), it removes the person at end of life from decision making, it means that people who don't have friends/relatives willing to help them and risk prosecution have to just put up with their pain.

The alternative is to attempt to legislate and talk through all the issues openly. That includes the lack of hospice provision and access to good home based palliative care for all - if we don't want assisted dying then we need to fund these. If we do want assisted dying then even more reason to fund palliative measures - it should always be the option that people turn to when nothing else has worked, and not having access to all the options isn't acceptable.

So sorry about your great gran. My gran was the same. I had to sit by her in agony for 3 days while she screamed as the drugs meant to sedate her didn’t work and try and stop her tearing the wires out. It seemed undignified and cruel, even though the PC team did their very best. I don’t want to go that way. Wouldn’t let a dog suffer that way! And yes, I have religious beliefs. Nothing to do with that.

100% this. At seven maybe he didnt mean he wanted to die, but he was going to die anyway, why would you leave your child in agony. I wouldn't, its unthinkable.

We don't know what we would do unless we went through it ourselves. If anyone remembers Jessica Whelan her dad posted a photo showing her pain. When she passed he said it was sad but also a relief for them. We end animals suffering but humans are expected to grin and bare the pain.

I'm totally in favour of assisted dying & euthanasia, but I can just see a lot of cases where adults, fed up of / drained from caring responsibilities, influence their parents or relatives or etc to seek death far earlier than they would otherwise have. I wonder how that issue can be overcome, if indeed at all.

I was a district nurse in the late 70s. We looked after patients with terminal cancer at home. All we could do was visit regularly and give diamorphine injections prescribed by the GP. (This was for adults IME. We had different nurses and arrangements for children AFAIK, I wasn't paediatric qualified so have no experience).
In the majority of cases, a point was reached where the prescribed dose needed to deal with the pain would amount to a dose sufficient to end the patient's life. This was discussed with the patient and their family and was generally accepted as the only option.
Of course things are very different now, with palliative care, various different treatments and pain relief options.
We cannot apply current standards, based on the choices available now, to someone's circumstances and actions decades ago.
That poor woman must have been in agony watching her child suffer and the child would have been suffering dreadfully too.
I have lost a child and I know many mothers who have lost their children and I know her grief and pain will be with her every single day, until the day she dies.
We should not judge her.

Don’t blame her . How heartbreaking 💔

No way I would judge this woman. The boy has 3 months to live and by the time she administered the dose he probably had even less.

@Summerose, "No one has the right to take it because no one creates it other than God." then surely no one has the right to heal but God so no hospitals? No saving newborns in distress at birth? where do we stop in not trying to do "God's job". Also no putting down dogs?

I have nothing but love and support for her. I am pro euthanasia being a choice we can make. Children don’t understand death and dying and what it means. She stopped his pain when he was dying. She lived with it. She is brave.

He would almost certainly have known he was dying. Maybe not explicity at that moment, but at that stage of his illness. He wouldn't have been the boy in the photo at that stage. I have nothing but respect for his mother's actions in this situation, at that time and place.

He was lucky to have such a brave, loving mum. Poor boy, and poor mum.

I read this earlier and it is horrifically sad. A very brave and loving mother faced with an unimaginable situation. Just so very sad.

God, that poor woman. I hope they leave her alone for the little time she has left.

If you have witnessed the pain people suffer as their body is engulfed by cancer then the choice is very simple.
It really isn’t a very dignified and comfortable death without pain relief. No quietly slipping away surrounded by your family.

You are right about this. We had another close family member die of Cancer just before my mum and my dad and brother wouldn’t share the details with me as it was too awful. This was 30 years ago so I imagine we handle it better now. I think this influenced my brothers dealings with the medical staff as he didn’t want my mum to suffer nor us to witness it.