To Die in Canada
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For Alan Nichols, I'd want to hear the other side of that story - we're only hearing the family's version
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I don't agree with making it too easy, but I sure as hell don't agree with banning it altogether either.
If I get some horrendous disease, I'd like be able to choose my manner of passing.
If you find the idea of assisted suicide abhorrent, then by all means don't kill yourself, but please don't tell me what I need to do.
I was only joking
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I don't agree with making it too easy, but I sure as hell don't agree with banning it altogether either.
If I get some horrendous disease, I'd like be able to choose my manner of passing.
If you find the idea of assisted suicide abhorrent, then by all means don't kill yourself, but please don't tell me what I need to do.
If I get some horrendous disease, I'd like be able to choose my manner of passing.
I have at least two former schoolmates that chose that route after being told their diagnosis was hopelessly terminal.
One was a retired senior analyst for our equivalent to the NSA and Naval Reserve Lt. Commander, in his early 70’s. He had not been feeling well for a couple of weeks and went to family doctor. The ensuing blood work raised some flags and further investigation determined extensive metastatic cancer throughout his body. The only thing the oncologists could offer was pain management as required and hospice when the time came. He chose to cash in rather put himself and family through a malingering death over the next couple of months.
The other was a Senior Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the university of Toronto. We shared an office together in grad school and remained friends for close to 40 years. In 2014 while on her way to work on the subway she suffered a debilitating stroke that left the right side of her body paralyzed, aphasia and confined to a wheel chair in a long term care facility. Through extensive rehab over the next two years she managed to regain enough of her speech that she could at least communicate. She looked into MAID when it was introduced but did not qualify. She then made the best of her situation and by 2018 went on a cruise with her nurse caregiver. The following year she planned the another cruise and while away began to experience extreme back pain. When she returned home (I think it was December 2019) she informed the doctor who then ordered tests. It turned out that she had advanced metastatic ovarian cancer. As she told me over the phone “just when I thought my life couldn’t get more fucked up, this turns up….I’ve had enough now, it’s time for me to cash in on my terms”. She did the application and it was approved. Two nights before she was scheduled for the procedure she died in her sleep from yet another, massive stroke. She had just turned 61 years.
As for myself I watched someone slowly die of ALS in my early twenties. Wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
That said there’s not much of debate about MAID in this country. It is up to people themselves to make the choice.
