Earlier this year a British couple left for Switzerland to die on their own terms. Both were terminal and both had to keep it a secret or else trigger religious and political outrage, as was experienced after the news hit the UK. As mentioned before, my personal belief is that people should have the option. Whether it's used is another story but that option would empower many people. I can understand opposition to this difficult situation because death is not an easy subject to discuss. It's uncomfortable and sad to even think of this day for our loved ones or ourselves.
I hadn't thought much about it one way or the other until my father was dying. He had been insistent on wanting to die at home, as comfortably as possible for someone with pulmonary fibrosis. The illness had come as a result of the chemotherapy treatment - not an uncommon side effect, I was later told - and over the course of five years he suffocated to death. Over that time he evolved into a person that few of us recognized. In addition to his own daily misery, my mother also slowly fell apart. She was physically healthy, though the mental strain of watching her husband of 40+ years decline was bad enough but she also had the pleasure of navigating a health care system that never could offer a clear answer or pay in a timely manner. (What's not to love about the corrupt US insurance industry that treats "customers" this way during such a stressful time.)
In the end, he was rushed to the hospital due to a bad fall at home. Naturally, like any good American hospital he was stopped in the front lobby as the hospital checked his insurance details. Twice in his final year hospitals did this insurance check despite the 911 calls. (And people think this business will change easily? Ha.) He became much too frail to leave the hospital which was the last place in the world he wanted to be and three days later he died. The religious extremists like to talk about glorious nature of dying but for me, I didn't see it. I saw peace following my father's death. It was an amazing transformation that happened within minutes of watching him take his final breath with us. He was tortured by his illness for years and suddenly his face returned to the look I had known years before. Some religions take pleasure in misery and find some higher meaning to such moments but for me I didn't see it at all.
In the UK, after the controversy over the couple who went to Switzerland to die, some politicians went on the offensive and talked about prosecuting family who had anything to do with the process. That has fortunately quieted down and now some in government are leading the move to legalize the process. There are also now over 800 Brits who are signed up with the Swiss clinic, seeking the option to die on their own terms. The Guardian:
Record numbers of Britons who are suffering from terminal illnesses are queueing up for assisted suicide at the controversial Swiss clinic Dignitas, the Observer can reveal.
Almost 800 have taken the first step to taking their lives by becoming members of Dignitas, and 34 men and women, who feel their suffering has become unbearable, are ready to travel to Zurich and take a lethal drug overdose.
The tenfold increase in the number of Britons who have joined Dignitas since 2002 will raise questions about the law that bans assisted suicide in Britain.
