‘Leaving people to suffer in the final stages of life is far from advanced’
A former nurse who has been diagnosed as suffering from PTSD after watching her husband die from cancer has backed calls to legalise assisted dying in Scotland.
Patricia Donoghue, 69, spoke out as Liberal Democrat MSP Liam Mcarthur prepares to formally introduce a Bill at the Scottish Parliament that, if passed, would allow terminally ill patients get help to end their life.
Mrs Donoghue, from Glasgow, said that leaving people suffering at the end of their life was “cruel”, and made the plea for the law to be changed eight years after her husband Kevan’s death.
He had been diagnosed with a rare form of bile duct cancer some 18 months before that, with the disease leaving him unable to eat or drink in his final three weeks of life.
Mrs Donoghue said her husband “felt abandoned by God and ultimately by the system that wouldn’t help him leave this world without suffering. He accepted death, but why did he have to suffer like that for three weeks?”
The former nurse practitioner said: “We think of Britain as being advanced, but we are not. Leaving people to suffer in the final stages of their life is far from advanced – it’s cruel.”
Having previously volunteered as a health care assistant providing hospice care, she also believes those working in palliative care would welcome a change in the law. “They are not in that job to let people suffer, they want to help people,” she said.
Speaking ahead of Mr Mcarthur’s Bill being lodged, she added: “I can’t change what happened to Kevan, but I want it to change for others in the future.”
Trevor Moore, the chair campaign group My Death My Decision, said: “It’s stories like Patricia’s and Kevan’s that show why Liam Mcarthur’s Assisted Dying Bill is so badly needed.”
My Death My Decision is campaigning for people in England and Wales who are terminally ill or in intolerable suffering to have the option of an assisted death.
Mr Mcarthur’s Bill marks the third time MSPS will have considered the issue, with previous attempts to change the law failing to secure enough votes to proceed.