Looks likely a vote on assisted dying is imminent

[fragrantdog]

‘A vote to introduce assisted dying across the UK could be imminent after Downing Street reiterated that it would not obstruct a private member’s bill on the issue and indicated it would support an MP in drafting it.’

do you seriously think that if you were at the end it would be a case of.. assisted dying or nothing?? what a ridiculous notion. as i said previously my husband took 16 long and painful weeks to die.. there was no other option, no mirable cure, no 'maybe he will pull through'... and i know he would have prefered to have passed with dignity and with his full faculties than the way he passed.. doped up to the eyeballs, wearing a nappy, being fed by a tube and almost a cabbage. he could have said his goodbyes to his children who had to watch that horrific show and had a peaceful and graceful passing.

It doesn't mean you are right either. I really hope it does pass. So many people endure an unnecessary painful and prolonged death.

I agree with assisted dying in principal.

But I am very wary of how it is turning out in practice re: Canada.

Especially if the NHS continues its terminal decline in the future.

I don't want someone feeling they have to kill themselves because they would not be able to afford the treatment/palliative care.

Too late for DM who suffered horribly in the last 2.5 weeks of her life. I watched her frail tiny arms, wave up and down and up and down for the last few days as every tiny piece of life passed out of her and her body went into this strange pattern of movement before death.

If you've seen it, you'll know what I'm talking about. It's weird and inhuman and so very very odd.

It's given me mental trauma, because she couldn't communicate those last 4 days. She couldn't swallow anymore. I saw her have her last swallows. She choked over and over because her throat muscles wouldn't work anymore.

She caught covid in the hospice she was in, dying of stage 4 terminal cancer. I can't put into words how horrific the last weeks of her life were.

And how I asked the consultants over and over again to please put her on a syringe driver. And yet they said it was better that she was conscious most of the time.

Yet while she was conscious she was in THE MOST EXCRUCIATING PAIN.

And I kept asking but why are you keeping her alive and to be conscious only for her to be in this enormous pain and I'd get "we must not do any harm".

I wanted to scream.

I realise it wasn't the doctors' fault but how can this be allowed to carry on???

She wanted to end it, she asked "how can we hurry things along?"

She would never ever have wanted me to see her like that in the last days. The worry of what was going on in her mind. The pain she may have been in for 4 days unable to speak.

It's made me terrified of my own death too.

You wouldn't put a dog or a cat through that.

Why is it OK to put a human through such immense pain in the name of "right to life". What bullshit.

I hope this becomes law.

My family die of cancer. My mother has PTSD from nursing her father and 4 of her siblings until death. She's told me the stage that she wants to go and asked me to help her die at that point.

We would both prefer it to be done properly, by a an experienced medical professional.

In the Netherlands you can make a living will and state your wishes in advance. That when you reach a certain stage in your dementia for example needing to go to a care home. The patient makes the decision for their future self while they still have capacity in conjunction with their doctors. It’s not a choice for their family to make.
Euthanising someone who no longer has capacity is murder IMO, even if they've given consent while they were able to. There are far too many stories of dementia patients being held down so they can be euthanised for this to ever be considered to be acceptable.

Let's make a comparison. A woman goes out for the evening and gets cosy with a man there. She tells him she's up for sex later and then they enjoy the rest of the evening. She gets drunk and they go back to his place and he starts to make a move on her but she says no, but he continues, after all, she gave consent earlier in the evening, so he has sex with her. Except at the time they had sex she was no longer in a position to consent, and even though she had done so earlier it would not be considered to be consent as she wasn't in a position to either give or withdraw consent when he had sex with her. It would therefore be considered to be rape in the eyes of the law.

The only point at which someone should be able to be euthanised is if they still have capacity to consent when the drugs are being administered, and so for a dementia patient this should mean years before they lose capacity.

Just get on with it.

Yes I know what's happening in Canada - and?

Canada is not the only place to look at - many other countries manage this.

Dying is not the worst thing that can happen to you - living in pain, lonely, with your dignity gone, dependent on the whims of others for a long period of time - much worse in my view.

I totally agree people have different opinions and accept that people have different views.

Please could you explain what you are thinking of in particular about the situation in Canada?

So you legislate so that the option is only available to people who have a terminal diagnosis.

Women in pain with treatable conditions unrelated to hormones or depression already have the option to end their lives, should they choose, by way of suicide. They have that option. Some people who are terminally ill and destined to die a slow, agonising death do not have that option because they will be too frail, infirm, or otherwise incapable of actually ending their own lives.

It's utterly inhumane and reprehensible to force them to go through that when we at least have the decency to spare small animals from it.

I'm sorry you went through that @abracadabra1980
There are so many thousands of stories like yours, (and others on this thread) sadly, told by Dignity in Dying.

Unless you have been in a similar scenario, you have no business telling others who have, that assisted dying is unethical.

100% agree.
No-one campaigning for these changes is suggesting killing people off. Such tabloid type headlines don't contribute anything to sensible debate.

Yet the reality of Assisted Dying is that disabled people are pushed in that direction even when they have no intention of wanting to end their lives.

Like Canadian Paralympian, Christine Gauthier who wanted a stairlift and was offered an assisted death instead.

care.org.uk/news/2022/12/canadian-paralympian-offered-assisted-suicide-when-asking-for-a-stairlift#:~:text=Canadian%20Paralympian%20offered%20assisted%20suicide%20when%20asking%20for%20a%20stairlift,-8%20December%202022&text=A%20Paralympic%20army%20veteran%20has,them%20medical%20assistance%20in%20dying.%22

Well said.

I'm horrified at this.

In theory I agree people who are suffering so much should have the choice. However, I feel like it could be so open to abuse and coercion.

Yet the reality of Assisted Dying is that disabled people are pushed in that direction even when they have no intention of wanting to end their lives

No.

This is the reality of Assisted Dying in a country where they didn't have the foresight to legislate with some basic safeguards, namely that the person in question should only have the option if they already have a terminal diagnosis or are in a persistent vegetative state and have signalled intent in advance.

Canada made a mess of it, but that changes nothing at all about the fact that it's well past time this was an option in the UK and we stopped permitting politicians to point at doctors, doctors to point at lawyers, and lawyers to point back at politicians who then opt out through cowardice and concern for their electoral prospects.

It won't in Scotland because the Catholic church will intercede.
I've nothing against religion but it still rules the roost in Scotland in too many ways.

I don't think that comparison holds water. In your example, the woman has said no to sex, and nobody could argue that her 'no' was meaningless because she was drunk. The idea of an advanced dementia patient being held down for a lethal injection is absolutely horrible, but it doesn't mean that this person has withdrawn the consent that they made, probably after much thought and heart-searching and in front of witnesses, at a time when they had capacity. You have to understand what is going on now and what is likely to happen in future in order to do that, and one of the awful things about dementia is that you don't have a clue sometimes what is going on or how things will progress. But I agree it is an awful situation and something that many medics would shrink from getting involved with.

By this logic, you'd presumably disagree with any kind of DNR requests? At the point of then needing to be followed, the person cannot consent.

I hope this gets passed. My father was left to die 'naturally' with an inoperable brain tumour and the last 3 months which was hell for him and us. He tried to commit suicide and was not able to do it successfully, it broke my heart.

Likewise with my mum, I sat with her as she died too. I can remember talking to the GP downstairs while she lay upstairs, several days before her death. It was awful I said, that her agony had to be prolonged so much, and if she were an animal we would be prosecuted for allowing unnecessary suffering. You put a dying animal out of its misery. The GP totally agreed with me, but there was nothing either of us could do. She lasted four more days and went through absolute gruesome hell. The morphine didn't touch it. If there had been anything I could have done to end it all for her, I would have done it.

The law needs to be adapted to account for the terminally ill in their last few days, particularly those suffering such unbearable pain. Their death is inevitable anyway.

Prolonging their suffering is a deliberate act of torture. As a society we need to be able to act with compassion.

I'm cynical....I don't trust governments. I struggle to believe any government in the world would pass assisted dying acts because they are compassionate and care about suffering . The world has an aging population. The elderly are going to cost the whole world a fortune. Birth rates are falling....there won't be enough young people to support the elderly population.

I watched my DDad die over 9 days. Day 4 is when I would have taken my DDog to the vets to be put out of their suffering, yet I couldn't do the same for my dad. He didn't know I was there, was in pain, despite sedation and painkillers, and I had to keep asking for a higher dose to control his pain.

Why on earth do we value human lives less than animal ones? It's just cruel and heartbreaking.

When my Dad was diagnosed with liver cancer, he went downhill rapidly and he asked me one day to pass him some insulin vials so he could "just get on with it". Had I known that day the horror of his last few weeks to come, I'd have done it. Even with an amazing palliative care team, my last memories of him are ones of him writhing in pain/confusion because his liver wasn't metabolising the painkillers/drugs he was given. I couldn't sleep for months afterwards and it's changed me forever as a person. I am now absolutely terrified of dying.

There has to be safeguarding but I have a feeling that most of those against it have never sat by the bedside of a loved one and watched their last hours.

Not ridiculous at all. Some people receive nothing right now and are left to get on with it. Palliative care is not open to all. I've seen some shocking things in my 30 years of nursing and I would not have any faith that decent palliative care would be offered.

There’s a difference between not attempting to resuscitate someone, and actively killing them

With a dnr the person is in fact clinically dead, so what you’re doing is to not attempt to reverse that. One of the reasons for that ironically is because it’s such a brutal process.

Whereas with the dementia patient, while they might not know about their surroundings, they certainly know fear while they’re being forcibly restrained.