My death will be a painful one & I don’t want to be lying in bed screaming my head off
GRAN NORMA’S BRAVE PLEA TO POLITICIANS Terminal patient urges MSPs to make assisted dying legal
A GRAN is begging MSPs: “Don’t let me die like my father, without dignity”.
Norma Rivers, 68, has been battling terminal myeloma – a type of blood cancer – since September 2016.
She was only diagnosed after a couple of fainting spells, the first when giving blood as a regular donor and then a short while later while swimming at her local pool.
Although she had been attending her doctor feeling poorly for two years beforehand, because of the nature of the disease an earlier diagnosis would not have given her a better outcome.
Norma, who lives in Ayr with her husband David, 68, was given five years to live when she was diagnosed. That time is rapidly running out and while Norma does not yet feel at the end of her life, she wants the right to have an assisted death when the time is right. But in Scotland that is not an option. In 2015 the Scottish Parliament voted to reject the Assisted Suicide Bill. However, a fresh campaign is gathering pace.
Norma has already lost her mum, dad, brother and granny to various types of cancer including lung and leukaemia.
But it was her father’s death from stomach cancer which most affected her. The gran-of-three said: “To see someone lying there in his final hours, not able to do anything for himself and begging for help to be put out his misery was traumatic.
“How can there be anything worse than that? You have no dignity lying there in a nappy and not able to get any other pain relief, begging for mercy.”
Watching her father die without any dignity is ingrained in her memory and she is determined her own daughter, Leanne, 39, will not have to watch her die the same way.
She said: “If it comes to that, I will take matters into my own hands for my sake but mostly for my family’s sake.
“When the end comes, I want to be in my own home having said goodbye to my family. That would be my dream. It costs £10,000 to go to Dignitas in Switzerland. When I was diagnosed, one of the first things I did was find out the cost. Spain has just changed the law and even Ireland is thinking about it. Scotland needs to move with the times.”
She is aware there is a genuine fear of the system being abused and patients being killed against their wishes but she said: “Two GPs and a psychiatrist have to make the decision that you are terminally ill and are not suffering from dementia or any other mental illness. You must be in a clear state of mind.
“The safety aspect of it can be written in. People are scared it will be misused but if proper procedures are in place I can’t see how that could be.” Norma is not yet planning her end of life but she explained: “It can change in a day. If I was to fall and break a bone or get an infection that could be the start of things for me. “I was given a stem cell transplant in 2017 which brought me two years of remission. I made the most of it, I went on holidays and cruises. I enjoyed the relief for a little while but it always came back. It has been back with a vengeance since November 2019.” Polls show nine out of 10 Scots support assisted dying. Frances McFadden, Campaigns and Operations Officer for Dignity in Dying Scotland, said: “We should all have choice and control at the end of our lives.”
We should all have choice and control at the end FRANCES McFADDEN DIGNITY IN DYING