Survivor defies odds
THIS weekend, Marj throwing a party.
It’s not for a birthday, a wedding or engagement – she’s bringing nearly 70 of her family, close friends, doctors and nurses together to celebrate a rare feat.
Ms Lawrence is one of only 5 per cent of people who have been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer to survive beyond five years.
Ms Lawrence, the regional co- ordinator for Dying With Dignity Queensland, said she has lived every day happy and grateful.
“The doctors just can’t believe I’m still alive,” she said.
“Very few people get through the first 12 months – anyway, I’m still here. I don’t know why, but it’s worth celebrating. People are always asking what is it that made me live so long, and I just think it’s all the support I’ve had from my family, doctors and all these friends, and I just want to take the opportunity to thank them.”
Ms Lawrence, 81, has been actively campaigning for voluntary euthanasia law reform for two decades since the painful death of her husband and six other family members from terminal illnesses.
“They need a law to stop people suffering like they do, and I do everything I can to promote it,” she said.
“When I was diagnosed with this cancer, it didn’t worry me at all.
“I’m not frightened about dying, Lawrence is but a lot of people have anxiety because they don’t know what they’re going to experience.
“If they had a law to allow the doctors to give us something when we reach that stage of life, that’s the ultimate comfort.”
Ms Lawrence said Queensland needed to consider laws similar to those recently implemented in Vic- toria legalising voluntary euthanasia.
She said people needed to be open about discussing plans for the end of their lives with their families and loved ones, as hard as it could be to talk about. “A lot of people, when they’re dying and really suffering, their family wants them to stay alive regardless,” Ms Lawrence said. “The people that are dying accept being kept alive artificially, hooked up to a wall with machines and tubes because they know their family doesn’t want them to die.
“We all die, everybody does, and the more peaceful it can be as far as I’m concerned, the better.”
Ms Lawrence will speak about voluntary euthanasia at an upcoming Health Expo in Townsville.