Euthanasia need to be considered in UK?

[Stoddy]

Voluntary Assisted Dying as been legal here in Western Australia for about 3yrs now and I know someone who took the option. It was my wife’s friend/boss who was a Professor of Neurology who ended up with a Stage 4 Neuroblastoma. There was no sugar coating it with her and she knew the eventual outcome so she took the voluntary assisted dying route when things started to go really bad for her. There are quite a few rules/laws and the person has to be of sound mind and sign off.
Told my wife that if I ever get diagnosed with, say, MND, I will be going this way when the time would be right. No chance I would go through what that horrible disease does.

 

[tonys]

Voluntary Assisted Dying as been legal here in Western Australia for about 3yrs now and I know someone who took the option. It was my wife’s friend/boss who was a Professor of Neurology who ended up with a Stage 4 Neuroblastoma. There was no sugar coating it with her and she knew the eventual outcome so she took the voluntary assisted dying route when things started to go really bad for her. There are quite a few rules/laws and the person has to be of sound mind and sign off.
Told my wife that if I ever get diagnosed with, say, MND, I will be going this way when the time would be right. No chance I would go through what that horrible disease does.

This country should seriously look into this, we always seem to take the wrong route in anything

 

[tres]

They did similar with my Nan. Basically she was on the way out, so they sped the process up with a morphine overdose. Was surprised they could even do that.

A prescribed syringe driver with morpine doesn't speed up the process.

 

[Colonel_Klinck]

There is certainly stuff that already goes on to hasten death, such as stopping the supply of liquids or loading people up with morphine. But of course in those situations the decisions are being made by the Doctor and not by the patient. And it would seem far kinder to end it all quickly and cleanly with an injection, than to let someone slowly die of thirst.

Both my parents died from terminal dehydration, as did my maternal grandmother and paternal grandfather. It is a thoroughly terrible way to go. Although none of them seemed with it in the last day or 2 they might have been desperate for a drink for all we know. It would be considered torture to deprive a human of water for days, let alone to the point they die. Labour need to have a serious conversation about this, maybe a Royal Commission, take it out of the political world and keep religion out of it.

 

[Orangeade]

The problem doesn't have to just be seen through religious eyes, it just needs to be see in the classical phrase of difficult cases make bad laws.

It would be hard not to gave empathy in specific cases without seeing how it can and probably will be abused fairly quickly from multiple facets (from the state outright wanting to save monkey, to bad hospital staff, to bad relatives to people pressuring themselves etc).

In my opinion it is better that society as a whole has protection from the state or authority figures until a better solution has been found.

 

[Uther]

The problem doesn't have to just be seen through religious eyes, it just needs to be see in the classical phrase of difficult cases make bad laws.

It would be hard not to gave empathy in specific cases without seeing how it can and probably will be abused fairly quickly from multiple facets (from the state outright wanting to save monkey, to bad hospital staff, to bad relatives to people pressuring themselves etc).

In my opinion it is better that society as a whole has protection from the state or authority figures until a better solution has been found.

As you're in Switzerland, do many Swiss go the Dignitas route when the time comes?

 

[Scort]

A prescribed syringe driver with morpine doesn't speed up the process.

Doesn't the word "overdose" give you a clue

 

[tres]

Doesn't the word "overdose" give you a clue

I am sure they didn't deliberately overdose. There may have been an 'extra' dose. But not an overdose.

 

[Colonel_Klinck]

I am sure they didn't deliberately overdose. There may have been an 'extra' dose. But not an overdose.

I think the term they use is "make them comfortable" but the large amounts of morphine they inject means not just that the person feels nothing but they their breathing will become labored and will ease them on their way.

 

[tres]

I think the term they use is "make them comfortable" but the large amounts of morphine they inject means not just that the person feels nothing but they their breathing will become labored and will ease them on their way.

They don't inject "large" amounts of morphine. They subcutaneously administer a calculated dose that is a measured amount to remove pain. If there is agitation, then midazolam is used.

A syringe driver does not hasten death. It reduces symptoms. Administering an amount that would cause respiratory depression, especially deliberately, is manslaughter.

DOI - doctor with a special interest in palliative care, worked in a hospice for several years, prescribed hundreds, if not thousands of syringe drivers

 

[Rainmaker]

They don't inject "large" amounts of morphine. They subcutaneously administer a calculated dose that is a measured amount to remove pain. If there is agitation, then midazolam is used.

A syringe driver does not hasten death. It reduces symptoms. Administering an amount that would cause respiratory depression, especially deliberately, is manslaughter.

DOI - doctor with a special interest in palliative care, worked in a hospice for several years, prescribed hundreds, if not thousands of syringe drivers

Yup. If only it did/they could! My wife's uncle passed away last year, after a severe frontal ischaemic stroke during dialysis. The doctors basically said he wouldn't have much time left even without the stroke, and although recovery from the stroke *was* possible to a degree, it'd take 2 years he didn't have anyway. After a conversation with my wife (his NOK) they withdrew all fluids and food, inserted a syringe driver with 10mg midazolam/24h, morphine (and later oxycodone) and various drugs to dry secretions. For everyone else, those are called anticipatory drugs and they're definitely a decent halfway house between nothing and euthanasia. They topped him up (PRN) for the first day while the driver took full effect, as he was occasionally waking and becoming agitated.

We had several 'quiet words' with his consultant and palliative nurse (who was fantastic, btw). He was suffering, he had zero chances of recovery and perhaps those doses might need... topping up a bit to make him more comfortable? The reply was 'absolutely not', and basically he'll die when he dies. It took four and a half days in the end, but he was at least sedated and comfortable. We got chance to say goodbye, sit with him and once he passed to lay him out and clean him etc (though short of full final offices, for probably obvious reasons).

Personally, in that situation I don't see any meaningful difference between we relatives sitting next to his unconscious body for 20 hours a day (literally) for five days awaiting the inevitable, and him being given a different medication once that final decision was made on day 1. If I was in his position, or suffering a painful and terminal disease, I'd certainly welcome the option to be relived of my suffering. Having sat with him for that final five days, as well as nursing a young (30s) relative with grade IV glioblastoma multiforme and a relative who effectively slowly drowned in terror due to lung cancer, I think it's cruel not to.

For anyone interested, US-based hospice nurse Hadley Vlahos has a brilliant book called 'The In-Between', all about her journey into hospice nursing with stores of multiple patients and how hospice and death really works. It's fantastic, not at all morbid, and I can highly recommend it to anyone - we're all going to die one day.