Joan Ruddock: I was tempted to smother dying husband
The former Labour MP made the admisson while appealing to parliament to legalise assisted dying
A FORMER Labour MP has revealed she was ready to smother her dying husband with a pillow to ease his pain.
Dame Joan Ruddock made the stark admission as part of an emotional appeal for the legalisation of assisted dying.
She said her husband Frank Doran – another former MP – had been suffering from end-stage bowel cancer in 2017 but she was struggling to get him pain-relieving medication the night before he died. She needed a doctor to administer an injection but had been told a medic might not be available.
“There and then I resolved that if a doctor did not come before 1am, I would end Frank’s life,” she said in a submission to MPS.
“I cursed myself for not using the liquid morphine when Frank could still swallow. Now my only option was a pillow over his head.
“I feared he might struggle but I got the pillow ready. Just after midnight a doctor arrived. He said there was no need as Frank was sleeping peacefully.
“I told him once the drug wore off the groaning would start again and I couldn’t allow his suffering to continue. He reluctantly gave the injection. Frank died seven hours later.”
On Wednesday Dame Joan called for a free vote in the Commons on assisted dying, saying that 80 per cent of the public agree with legalisation. Her intervention comes just weeks after Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said he would back legalisation.
Pressure to change the law has been rising since Dame Esther Rantzen revealed at the end of last year that she was considering travelling to Dignitas in Switzerland to end her life.
Dame Joan was Labour MP for Lewisham Deptford from 1987, and was married to Mr Doran, the Labour MP for Aberdeen North. They both retired in 2015 and the pair endured a year of him living with colon cancer before he died aged 68 in October 2017.
The Commons health select committee is investigating the issue of assisted dying, and it was to this inquiry that she made her submission.
Dame Joan said the pair had “spoken openly about death and promised each other help with the dying process should it be needed. It was a very happy marriage. I loved him deeply and was determined to support him and didn’t leave his side during the gruelling hours of chemotherapy at our local hospital.”
He gradually weakened and she became a full-time carer after doctors said he was too weak to endure further treatment. She said her husband had “begged” her to ensure he died at home, not in an institution.
“Some days later I heard a desperate cry,” Dame Joan recalled. “Frank was in the bathroom where I saw the toilet, the floor and his lower body covered in excrement. It was a pitiful sight, and he was absolutely mortified. He said simply ‘I can’t go on living like this’.
“After holding his shaking skeletal frame under the shower and getting him back to bed I broached the question of whether he wanted help to die. He grunted incoherently.”
Dame Joan was left in charge of administering morphine orally at prescribed intervals.
“The nightmare continued for a few days, the morphine dose was increased, and he became comatose and groaning in agony. I couldn’t bear to see him suffering any longer,” she said.
“When nurses came, I asked if they could do something more. One said it was normal and nature would take its course. I said I couldn’t accept that.
They eventually agreed and ordered a drug to be injected at the next visit.”
But the drug only lasted for five hours and no one would be available to administer it in the evening, she said.
“In Frank’s case the treatment was not sufficient to remove physical suffering and no care could remove the anguish of the mental and emotional suffering,” she said.
“I do not believe we need to accept suffering when a condition cannot be treated, and death is inevitable. A person of sound mind should be able to ask to end their life in these circumstances.”
“By not having this choice we both suffered, and we used up a huge amount of NHS resource that could have been better deployed elsewhere.”
‘There and then I resolved that if a doctor did not come before 1 am, I would end Frank’s life’