They were treated like dogs waiting to be put down, says son of death pathway couple

A WAR veteran and his wife died within days of each other after being put on the Liverpool Care Pathway without consent.

Charles Futcher, 90, who fought in the battle of El Alamein, died alone in a care home after he was put on the controversial end-of-life process.

Ten days later his wife Hilda, 89, died in the same home after she too was given sedatives and had vital food and fluids withdrawn under pathway procedures.

Their son, Charlie, said his parents had been treated ‘like animals who needed to be put down’ by doctors who ‘seemed to take it upon themselves to get rid of them’.

The 62-year-old, who was at his mother’s side when she died, said the couple’s treatment had been grotesque and claimed they were put on the pathway without consultation.

Just two weeks before his death, Mr Futcher had celebrated his 90th birthday at a family party.

‘He was in a wheelchair and was in discomfort, but he was compos mentis and you could speak to him about anything, he was sharp,’ his son said.

‘I wanted to be there with him’

When his sister received a telephone call from the care home to tell her that their father, a former ambulance driver, had been put on sedatives, Mr Futcher Jr did not think it meant he was seriplan ously ill. As a result, the old soldier died without any of his family being present.

Mr Futcher Jr said: ‘I would not have wanted my father to suffer if he had been riddled with cancer or his diabetes was killing him, or if he had made the decision to go.

‘I would have just liked to have been there with him.

‘But somebody else was making those decisions and not telling us.’

After his father died, Mr Futcher Jr, a former teacher who owns a hotel in the Peak District of Derbyshire, lost all faith in those caring for his mother at the care home in Petersfield, Hampshire.

‘I just didn’t trust them so I stayed with her all the time,’ he said. ‘Her dementia was quite bad, but she knew people.

‘She couldn’t hold a conversation any more but she knew who I was and would give me a hug.’

Mr Futcher Jr claims that within days of his father’s death, care home staff stopped giving his mother food or fluids and her health deteriorated rapidly.

He said: ‘They were telling me that she’d forgotten how to eat and when I arrived there she was so frail.

‘I held her hand up to the light and could see the blood going through her veins, that’s the state Denied food or fluids: Second World War veteran Charles Futcher with his wife Hilda. Right: Their son Charlie they got her into. We had a family friend there and I said, “There’s no way that my mother is refusing food and we have to get some fluids in there”.

‘I went and bought a baby’s feeding bottle and put some water into it and she just sucked it down. You just couldn’t pull it out of her mouth.’

Mr Futcher Jr claims the same GP who allowed his father to be put on the Liverpool Care Pathway authorised district nurses to put his mother on sedatives without his even having visited her.

He added: ‘It was a grotesque death. When I watched my mother die over those 33 hours she was so thin and dehydrated, it actually changed the shape of her head.

‘It’s like taking your animals to the vet. I’ve got dogs and they get old and you agree to put them down. It’s no different to that, no different at all.’ Norman Boyes, practice manager at the Swan Surgery in Petersfield, where Mr and Mrs Futcher’s doctor worked, said: ‘ We are sorry if anyone is unhappy with the care and advice provided. ‘The practice has a formal complaints procedure, and we would encourage any of the family members who have any concerns to contact us directly.’ Mr Futcher Jr’s Czech- born mother was at a wartime refugee camp when she met his father, who was on duty there after serving in the Eighth Army under Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. The Liverpool Care Pathway is designed to ease the suffering of terminally hours of foods and and can ill fluids patients involve as the well in withdrawal their as the final use of Yesterday sedatives such the Mail as morphine. revealed that up pathway to 60,000 each patients year without die on giving the their consent. Yet Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has described it as ‘a fantastic step forward’ – and dismissed concerns as based on matters

‘going wrong in one or two cases’. ‘It’s basically designed to bring hospice-style care to terminally ill people in hospitals,’ he said. Mr Hunt added that many patients did not want to die ‘with lots of tubes going in and out of their body’ but would prefer their last moments to be dignified.