Assisted Dying

[Nordione1]

I dont know what section to put this in. Im more upset about the vote for it than I thought I'd be. I feel like we have crossed a rubicon somehow.

My daughter and I were talking about it, and I felt the same devastation - my husband has been slowly dying for the last six months and he, in the most profound and emphatic terms, wants to live!

With the effects of multiple surgeries and chemotherapy side effects until every reasonable treatment option was exhausted
With blindness
With Incontinence
With Loss of speech
With Majority of his body paralysed

He has never, ever, wanted anything less than the fullest life he could possibly get.

That the policy conversation has shifted so solidly, when the support he has received is so threadbare - it feels like his monumental efforts of endurance are being written away as an inconvenience to be tidied.

This new law, I fear, is a fiction of control to comfort those facing the uncontrollable - it changes nothing for those who are resolute and is devastating for those still enduring and those who watch.

It was more the point that the nurse left a jug of water next to his bed until I came to see him and he knew it was there. I don't have any faith in a humane death with the NHS administering it. I don't think any of us can assume that will happen.

I am pleased, people who wish to pass away earlier should be allowed that right.

However, that doesn't mean good, quality pallative care should be taken away or reduced.

That's such an important point.

That's not comparable - this is for people who have 6 months left to live, have capacity and express their own wish, twice to doctors, that they want to die. As an owner I have to chose for my dog based on my assessment of his quality of life. I take that responsibility seriously. Dogs are different to people in the way they think and cognition - they live in the moment and don't understand why they feel ill or why things are happening. If my old dog was incontinent - and it wasn't fixable or temporary, it would be time for him because he would be distressed at toileting in the house and at nearly 13 it'd be part of a serious decline.

I can't imagine ever wanting to die, and the thought of this becoming law terrifies me.

But, I've never been in extreme pain. I haven't lost the use of my limbs, watched myself waste away and seen the pain and pity in my loved ones' eyes.

This bill has really freaked me out but I know that's just my own fear of death coming out. If someone genuinely wants this, and is able to make the decision, then of course they should not have to suffer.

I agree with those who want it and also with the reasons those who oppose it give. So - I want assisted dying to be available to those who wish to end their lives with dignity when they choose and with their family around them (and this not to just be for people who can afford Dignitas), but I would also like palliative care to be improved and affordable, stringent checks on who is eligible for it so the system isn’t abused.

But anyone who’s been present for the suffering of a dying relative who cannot ever get better, listening to them in agony, begging to die for months, weeks, and on some cases years, they aren’t anti any of those checks either.

They are wishing they didn’t have those images and memories in their head forever and hope that isn’t their own fate and that new legislation can mean this experience is less common in the future.

I am so sorry about your husband. He, however, will not choose assisted dying. In that position I would very much want to and so want to be allowed to do so.

The vet told me to put my pet down 18 months ago. I chose to give him a bit more time and he's still here today, happy and healthy. We don't always get it right with animals, and often PTS is because we can't afford the best treatment or the animal can't understand what's happening to them. I don't agree that putting animals to sleep is the same as assisted dying.

I'm glad it's passed to the next stage. I watched a beautiful young mother die a prolonged and agonising death from cancer. That was inhumane.
Allowing terminally ill, mentally competent adults to choose when they die is humane.

Of course it doesn't help all those poor late middle aged women who are tearing themselves to shreds looking after parents with dementia who can't make that choice.

I agree with it. My Father begged me, the rest of his family and friends to poison him, towards the end of his life, he was in absolute agony.
My mother had to beg marie curie nurses to put him on a driver just to make him comfortable..
nobody should suffer like that. Nobody

me too. I hoped it wouldn’t pass and it did.
We don’t have capital punishment and now have assisted dying, I know it looks different but court mistakes and medical mistakes are equally possible.

I am glad that the vote passed, it is a step towards a more dignified end. I hope to see it reformed in a few years to include more illnesses as only allowing it for people who have less than 6 months to live is too narrow a scope.

So am I.

I am pleased about it and think it’s long overdue.

I also hope it’s extended to allow people with intolerable illnesses to make their own decisions. I have ME. It’s a cruel, unforgiving disease and the stigma around it is just as intolerable.

I'm really pleased personally

I agree with you. I'm disabled and sometimes I've felt so bad I'd have begged for this. But then things improve and I'm so grateful that it wasn't an option. I don't believe that it'll stay as only in terminal cases. I believe it will creep towards vulnerable people like me.

The bill did not include the state killing people.

The problem is with care and the NHS currently what it is in the UK then people like PPs husband may feel they should chose assisted dying, so as not to be a burden on their family or a burden on the state. Because they cant access what they actually want and need which is proper palliative care

If your going to offer assisted dying you also have to offer excellent palliative care. I personally don't think as a country we are in a position right now to offer ethical assisted dying, we can barely offer ethical basic care

I agree with this. I don't think the state should end the lives of people. That's the fundamental issue I think. No matter what. But I also have seen the other side with loved ones in terrible agony.

I feel like this vote was too quick.

I understand why people on an individual level want this but I think longer term it could lead to some very harmful effects and attitudes on a societal level. If fully passed into law I'm not at all convinced there won't be mission creep into other demographics beyond the terminally ill and dying.

Thank God for this. Ive been a nurse for 40 years and this hopefully means I will ever again have to see anyone in agony screaming to their death with their faces completely eaten away with cancer or with the bottom half of their bodies rotted away due to circulatory problems and no pain medication works. It gave me PTSD looking after these people who begged me to let them die every single day.

Absolutely!! So relieved this will now happen in some shape or form.

Nurse of 34 years who has nursed many dying people.
Very pleased with this news.

This 100%