An Uncomfortable Truth — Not Every Life Is Worth Living
Mrs Turnbull wants to die. ‘Will you talk to her, Max?’ asks one of the medical doctors. ‘Maybe prescribe her something?’ he suggests.
I glance down at her notes. Mrs Turnbull is in her late 40s: 14 years ago she suffered horrific injuries in a crash, leaving her brain damaged, paralysed and reliant on carers for even the most basic tasks. As well as frequent seizures, she suffers difficulty swallowing and has choking fits.
Overnight she had gone from being a successful graphic designer with a busy social life — independent and free — to cocooned inside a body that refused to move or function properly.
back in hospital after developing a chest infection, she is repeatedly expressing the wish to die, so I have been asked to see her.
Her speech is slurred, but she is eloquent. If she had been able to, she would have killed herself a long time ago because, for her , life is intolerable and has ceased to have any meaning.
Of course, there will be people who argue that she can find worth in her life; that she can still contribute to society; that life is a gift, in whatever form it takes, and she should learn to celebrate this rather than wish to obliterate it. but she doesn’t see it like that.
Over the years, I have seen many patients like Mrs Turnbull; patients whose lives have been saved or prolonged by medicine but who have been consigned in degrees to a living hell.
These are the patients who prey on your mind when you go home at night, who make you think how society would never allow an animal to suffer in this way.
This week , noel Conway , who has motor neurone disease, lost his High Court battle to allow assisted dying. His argument was that suicide is legal but there will come a point when he is unable to do this himself and he wants doctors to be able to help him. He fears being entombed in his own body as it begins to fail.
I completely understand and in the same circumstances, I think most doctors would take the quick way out. but should there be a change to the law?
My biggest concern is that there is potential for such legislation to be abused, or for it to alter the way those with severe disabilities or terminal illnesses are perceived and treated, and this makes me wary. I also fear it could be used to ‘ease off ’ the elderly or those who are severely mentally ill.
The only solution I can see is for each case to be discussed in a court of law; that this becomes a legal decision, not a medical one.
Critics of assisted dying argue that none of this is necessary necessary, tha that modern medicine means people can live long, pain-free lives. but I take issue with this. While physical suffering can be alleviated in all but the rarest cases, to say that pain control is the determining factor in someone’s quality of life is wrong.
That is not the key point here. It is the emotional pain, for which no analgesia exists, that is often the deciding factor in such cases.
Antidepressants won’t make you walk again. Talking therapies can help in changing the attitudes to an illness or disability , but they can’t bring back your old life.
no analgesia can deaden the gnawing sense of powerlessness, the frustration, the indignity.
Certainly
many people with debilitating and terminal conditions lead fulfilling lives, but there are also those who do not.
Who am I to say that Mrs Turnbull’s life is worth living? Or that noel Conway should endure being ‘entombed’ in a body that no longer responds to him? That he should live a life that I wouldn’t want myself?
While I am racked with indeci - sion about whether I want to live in a country that helps people die, I feel equally as uncomfortable that as soon as the topic of assisted suicide is raised, cohorts of people feel obliged to pass judgment on someone else’s existence.
by all means argue that assisted suicide is open to abuse, but do not propose to know what it feels like to lie in a bed staring at the ceiling day in and day out, being turned by carers as they wash you and change your sheets, longing for the life you had but which is now out of reach.
Don’t tell me that doctors can control that sort of pain.