Sian: I’d end my life if I was severely ill
VETERAN weather presenter Sian Lloyd has added her voice to the fierce debate about assisted dying – and says that if she was told she had a degenerative condition like her elderly mother, she would want to be helped to end her own life.
Her mother Barbara, 81, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s five years ago. The disease affects the brain and the nervous system, causing a slow decline into disability.
‘I believe in quality of life rather than quantity, and if I was severely ill and in pain, I wouldn’t want to be a burden on my husband,’ says Sian, right.
‘I hope I would have the courage to go somewhere like Dignitas. I would rather there were places like that in this country.’
Last week TV presenters Richard Madeley, 58, and his wife Judy Finnegan, 65, revealed in an interview that they had a pact not to let the other suffer a long, undignified death. And former Blind Date host Cilla Black claimed she felt she might consider ending her own life having seen her mother battle a long-term illness.
Sian, 55, who is married to motor racing entrepreneur Jonathan Ashman, says: ‘My dad is a fit 82-year-old and is a very good cook, and he copes remarkably well with looking after my mum, but it’s difficult to see her gripped by this awful illness.
‘It has been very brave of Richard and Judy to come out and say what they did, and I think that Jonathan and I would do the same.’
Sian adds: ‘Of course I worry that I could get Parkinson’s even though there is no genetic link.’ LEARNING a second language helps delay dementia, researchers suggest. A study by a team at Harvard University of 648 people from India, all of whom had varying degrees of dementia, found that those who spoke at least two languages developed the condition on average four years later than those who spoke just one.
Researchers say that language-learning strengthens the area of the brain associated with attention. However, the benefit is not increased by learning a third language – the study found that speaking more than two made no difference to the onset of dementia.