‘Given my circumstances my death will be an easy one, but there are so many things about life I will miss’
SURPRISINGLY, I have managed to avoid falling down the stairs in my flat.
And I am reminded that in life, plans and outcomes are often very different. My plan is to die in Switzerland on the morning of June 15, 2017. But the outcome may be that I have the good fortune to die in my sleep before then.
If that happens, then at least the urgent need for legalised voluntary assisted suicide in Scotland has had maximum publicity thanks to my diary for the Sunday Herald.
Next time the Scottish Parliament debates the issue they will surely – please – vote to legalise it. Hopefully our MSPs will realise that is what the majority of the electorate wants.
Leaving politics aside for a moment and returning to my daily life, I am now relying on random visits from friends to take away rubbish from my kitchen as the bins are outside, and due to leg tremors I am no longer able to shave. The occasional visit means I am able to get a cup of tea and a meal without spilling most of the contents.
People have asked me, “Why have you just not ended your life by taking pills with alcohol?”
Of course I did consider that, but the same drug can have very different effects on different people. I could have been hospitalised or lain dead, covered in flies, decomposing in my flat for days before being discovered. Hardly a dignified death – which is what I want, after all.
I had asked friends and relatives if I could consume my internet-obtained drugs in their back garden. The guise would be, “We gave him a cup of tea and he sat in the garden reading a newspaper.” My suggestion was declined on the basis that friends and relatives feared being charged by the police for assisting a suicide.
Remember, this diary is about legalising voluntary assisted suicide – providing people like me with a guaranteed dignified death unlike individual suicide attempts which often leave the patient alive and hospitalised, as well as friends and family traumatised.
Fast-forward a month and I now have my own voluntary assisted suicide on the horizon.
I fully realise the NHS is overwhelmed in trying to provide for an ever-growing number of people requiring care.
The situation is further complicated by uncertainties over what is the best treatment for those, like me, with disabling neurological illnesses. Although multiple sclerosis was first diagnosed almost 150 years ago in 1868 by French physician Dr Jean-Martin Charcot, there is still no agreement on effective treatment, never mind a cure.
The drug Fampyra is prescribed, but it only benefits some patients by slightly improving their ability to walk.
This week research has suggested statins may be beneficial; stem-cell treatment either with or without chemotherapy is not considered to be a cure but capable of improving a patient’s mobility. And the unknown answer to the burning question is still: why do the immune systems of individuals that have worked well for many years decide that myelin is harmful, so begin to attack it, thus triggering MS?
Initially promising but inconclusive research into HIV, another immune system disease, using Aids anti-retroviral drugs has been tried.
The bottom line is: my life will not change or improve, only deteriorate. With that in mind, let’s return again to the daily difficulties that primary progressive multiple sclerosis presents for me.
ILIVE in Inverness on a busy city centre street. My flat is now totally unsuitable for me. Anyone with a vehicle visiting me cannot park close enough to get me from the flat and take me out for a drive. Oh, and there’s no lift in the building, and two steep flights of stairs to climb to my front door. My life has closed in, restricted by such mundane issues as a few flights of stairs and the layout of city-centre streets.
As many have suggested, it is the choice made by the BMA, some doctors and MSPs that has resulted in severely physically ill people like me deciding to travel to Switzerland sooner than they would need to, if legalised voluntary assisted suicide were available in Scotland. I would like to have chosen assisted death in Scotland at the end of this September, but like many I fear by then I would be physically incapable to make the journey to Switzerland.
Given my circumstances, though, my death will be a worthwhile death and an easy death. But there are so many things about this life that I will miss. Listening to music is the number one – it has been a constant source of joy to me.
Playing “call and response” electric blues guitar licks is another. It is totally fulfilling and I recommend more women discover this mostly male pastime to find the joy it offers.
Friends I will also miss. Many of those who live far from Inverness and whom I will not be able to see again before I die, managed to bid me farewell at a little get-together last week. We did some great reminiscing about good times and happy experiences we had been through together.
I will remember them always.