Assisted dying bill (TW assisted suicide discussion)

[Onand]

I appreciate this is a divisive subject and a sensitive topic for many. Please avoid this thread if you find any discussion of suicide, death, trauma, terminal illness, cancer and faith triggering.

I’m curious to know how others are feeling about this subject, from what I can see there isn’t a lot of discussion, is this a MNHQ decision or an indifference from posters?

My opinion and views on this potential landmark decision are based on my horrifying experience of watching and waiting for my mum to pass from end stage cancer several years ago.

For over four years she fought advanced cancer, she took every treatment and trial offered to her. She endured major abdominal surgery, many blood transfusions, multiple rounds of chemo, lost her hair several times, her bones started to crumble causing excruciating back pain, severe abdominal swelling, double nephrostomy as her kidneys failed, multiple lesions on her brain that caused debilitating headaches and personality changes, her teeth and bones were decaying due to a calcium disorder, various hospital stays for infections, the list goes on.

Truly the most hideous nightmare cancer ‘journey’ anyone could ever imagine, it always felt like one step forward and two backwards and yet she carried on without much fuss or sign of fear to protect the family and herself from the true horrors of suffering.

She never wanted to die and so she never gave up or gave in- that was until the last few weeks of her life when she had no choice. The immense damage and toll cancer had done to her physical body was too much to survive any longer so the last infection she had took her consciousness and so began the final horrifying curveball that cancer has up its evil sleeve, this one is for the loved ones though, because now you have to wait and watch for the end to come. Anyone who has endured this knows exactly what I am talking about, a horror that truly brings home the meaning of hell of earth.

If the assisted dying bill was around whilst my mum was alive I know she would have never entertained an early death whilst she was still in control and able to fight, but I do know that her love for the family would have also meant she would never have wanted us to endure that final two weeks of watching and waiting for her body to shut down if it could have been avoided and she was able to specify what was to happen at the end. There was no possibility of her ever getting better or a miraculous recovery, death was very inevitable and a certainty but we still had to sit and watch, doing oral care and leaving the room as they checked for bed sores and did secretion suction. The only thing I could do to protect and help her was the make sure she was undoubtedly unaware of what was happening as she feared death and leaving us behind- the thought of her being remotely aware meant we were constantly asking the nurses for more and more sedation.

If this bill gives patients the choice to avoid the hideously evil ending of a terminal illness and the following ptsd that impacts the loved ones left behind then it is an opportunity I strongly agree with. Watching a loved one die an agonising death is soul destroying and something I hope no one has to ever endure if said loved one could choose to avoid.

How do others feel?

It is so sad reading all these harrowing experiences. Why has palliative care become so poor? Why are people dying protracted painful deaths with poor symptom control, some getting treated for inevitable infections despite having weeks or days to live.

Years ago Macmillan nursing teams used to manage end of life care. Now, certainly ime though it may be a postcode lottery, it is GPs and very basically care staff who are providing this complex care.

It is no wonder some believe this bill is the answer when they've had such traumatic experiences of loved ones dying. to all those affected and op, if you haven’t already please access counselling to help you come to terms with what happened.

Exactly @Onand .

My concern is , as stated by the surgeon on R4 Today this morning, that the demographic in the H of C leans towards the young. Who may not have seen or witnessed this kind of suffering.

I suspect dementia will get me, but of course by definition that is outside the scope as capacity will be lost. That is why we need legally enforced living wills.

In my decades of care home visits I have lost count of the number of formally able , intelligent, professional people I have seen in care homes, dribbling their food, and pissing and shitting in their adult nappies.

Some of them howl in despair. Others are just gnarled husks, hoisted in and out of bed. They know no one. Their fear and horror above all else is palpable. It is beyond cruel.

There is no good death for these people. It is a living tomb.

That's the reality. And no amount of patronising kiddie visits at Christmas from the local school, or choruses of If you're happy and you know it - along with healthy chair based exercises of course - will expunge that.

Those places are a living hell and I will kill myself rather than go to one, if the law has not changed.

@52crumblesofautumn

So the family will inherit six months earlier ? That is hardly likely to make any difference to anyone.

Why would a family NOT want an end to watching the trauma and suffering?

Why would a dying person NOT want their relatives to be spared witnessing that?

It’s based on ‘nothing’. Another example of ill thought out and rushed documentation dressed up as a legal process.

Yes, I worry about that too re '6 months' sorry for the straw man - one of the good things is that friends and family in several cases have lived more than a year after being told they were terminal thanks to improvements in cancer treatment.

And personally no, if my family member wanted to live that bit I wouldn't want them to spare me the memories.

Ha 6 months could definitely make a difference to my relatives - people that inherit generally aren't that young themselves these days, esp given length of probate etc.

Pleuritic/neuropathic pain caused by infection is opioid responsive? Interested in your evidence base for that?

Ironically the palliative care my mum received was excellent, she had a two week stay in a private room in a specialist cancer hospital. I advocated for as much sedation they could legally administer. The sad part is despite the exceptional care and considerate staff who supported us through the ordeal we still had to sit by and watch a loved one take 2 weeks to die.

She was in no pain so we were told but any sliver of awareness she had throughout that must have been absolutely terrifying for her. That final 2 weeks was unnecessarily cruel, it did nothing more than exasperate an already dire situation. There’s no way out and that feeling of there is absolutely nothing you can do to help them is heartbreaking in ways you cannot fathom.

So given our privileged yet still diabolically evil experience, how many other people receive poor palliative care every day and have even more traumatic deaths who could be helped by assisted dying during those final weeks?

As for counselling, the sheer joy and relief I felt once she eventually passed was unthinkably soothing and cathartic, the battle was over. I just hope people don’t have to ever experience that in the future -if they don’t wish to.

So given our privileged yet still diabolically evil experience, how many other people receive poor palliative care every day and have even more traumatic deaths who could be helped by assisted dying during those final weeks?

I still don't understand why the proposed solution is to kill people a few weeks or months before natural death rather than provide proper palliative care.

A living tomb. Exactly. It’s a tragedy beyond belief and a frightening prospect for anyone.

I feel that as medical advancements have helped us live longer lives we’re of the thinking that reaching mid 80s is a good run regardless of the state you’re in.

I have a great aunt who is in a home suffering a miserable dementia riddled existence, she has no awareness of who she is where she is or when it is, just flesh and bones. I look at her and think if this is my future what the hell would I do because that is certainly not living. It is equally as harrowing as end stage terminal illness.

Good that her palliative care was excellent, sadly it is so hit and miss. I understand when you say that it was still an distressing experience.

Oh please stop. Pain management is indeed complex but there are many options.

The point is giving someone antibiotics in their final weeks and days is absolutely futile and can exacerbate distressing GI symptoms.

Have you ever taken ABs and had an upset stomach/the runs? Now imagine that whilst bed bound, distressed and dying. Great you may clear up a chest infection but now they have diarrhoea and a whole host of new problems.

@Onand . It is of course an end stage terminal illness as savage as cancer.

It's just that one of the delightful aspects of dementia is that it goes on and on and on, especially if you lived a previously healthy life or have long lived genes. ( like me, shoot me now.)

And the ultimate delightful twist is there is no way out. If you have lost capacity, or even have fluctuating capacity, no medic will sanction assisted dying.

The first paragraph from that point you quoted explains that the palliative care my mum had was proper and excellent.

But excellent palliative care did not cancel out the fact we sat at her bedside holding her hand as her body started to shut down.

Excellent palliative care did not stop her from having seizures and groaning despite pain relief and every other conceivable concoction we could have going through her syringe driver.

Excellent palliative care still meant we saw her eyes sink into her face, her skin become cold and mottled, her bodily functions emptying her bowels, her breathing become awfully erratic

Excellent palliative care didn’t stop her secretions from massing on her chest causing her to violently cough making her wake like something from a zombie film and then have to have suction to remove the mucus.

Excellent palliative care is great when your body agrees to a kind gentle death- if that is not the case then your loved ones must sit and watch the horror unfold before them whilst sipping on tea and biscuits and sleeping on a camp bed.

@Onand horrific. Am so sorry. I do hope you words have made some people think. Think hard.

Because there isn't palliative care that can prevent all suffering.

Thank you.

I do hope this thread is making people think because a few years ago I had no idea what dying from cancer really looked like and that was with great care and constant hospital supervision plus a devoted family who were with her the whole time.

To think how it can be worse gives me chills. It needs to change.

I found this on the Henry 8th clause in the bill: (it’s a government page). I just googled ‘assisted dying bill UK Henry clause’ and it came up top on a .gov page

Its specifically mentioned at number 9 but I think the whole page is about it but it is very legal wording and I am struggling to make much sense of it tbh.

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld5802/ldselect/lddelreg/83/8303.htm

That's not the current bill @Rinoachicken it's about a different bill from 2021.

The one that's going through at the moment is here:

https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3774

Ah thanks @PencilsInSpace

A few posters have mentioned religion. I've read a lot of threads on this topic over the past couple of years and I cannot remember reading a single post on any of them arguing against assisted dying for religious reasons.

It might be handy for those in favour of the bill to be able to dismiss objections as religious but it's a straw man.

The population data in the Dignity in Dying survey would suggest religion is not nearly such a huge factor as some people think.

https://yonderconsulting.com/poll/dignity-in-dying/

I sincerely hope this is the case but I shall remain sceptical for now and assume some of those with arguments against may be rooted in theological beliefs.

I also feel there is a slight naivety for some of those against, the big bad state coming to euthanise all those who don’t measure up or thinking there’s going to be queues outside GP surgeries across the country with unsuspecting grannies in wheelchairs and the money hungry relatives demanding they be ‘set free from their ailments’.

Too many people need this bill to pass to allow them a dignified choice on their terms of how they leave this planet, I wholeheartedly wish no one ever goes through the hideously vile experience so many of us have been through because it gives you a perspective you cannot fathom.

Yes it does look that way. Can't find any reasoning for it in the Bill document online. The only other mention of time in that document is the 12 months requirement of being a resident of England/Wales prior to requesting assisted dying.

My friend in her thirties died a truly hideous death in a lot of pain. Cancer in her bones, her eyes, ascites, jaundice, skeletal. She took her last breath screaming, her tongue poking out. She was all yellow and looked like a tiny little bird. She had a palliative care team and all the drugs but a lot of cancers are incredibly painful. I didn’t realise how bad dying naturally could be until I witnessed it at close range. She’d run out of options months before but her body kept going as she had been young and fit.

I had assumed before then that cancer was a slow fade out but now I know better. It’s brutal.

I don’t know how, in extreme circumstances like this, doctors don’t keep giving morphine to stop the pain, even if that leads to death.
Death would not have been the motive, just a secondary consequence.

Your poor friend. The cruelty is unbelievable.

Absolutely vile. That poor woman. Truly makes you wonder why anyone would think that is a viable alternative to being able to go before it takes you in such horrendous circumstances.

Sitting witnessing such a cruel twisted death makes you realise what the phrase Hell on Earth actually means.