My compassion and love for them mattered more than any threat of criminal prosecution (Picture: Dignity in Dying)
I had been friends with Bob and Ann for over 40 years.
And when I accompanied Ann to die at Dignitas, I had no idea I’d be joining her husband, Bob, there just over a year later.
Bob and I met over 40 yeas before and shared a love of the hills, socialist politics, folk music and red wine (not always in that order).
He met Ann in 1980. She was a very active woman who also loved being outdoors and shared our passion for activism.
I hated the thought of the last days of their lives being filled with suffering and pain, so when they asked me to make that journey with them of course I said yes. My compassion and love for them mattered more than any threat of criminal prosecution.
At aged just 68 Ann was diagnosed with a terminal illness called progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a rare, incurable condition where bits of the brain fuse together. While her original prognosis was about seven years, she deteriorated rapidly.
Within months she was in agony and couldn’t do anything for herself. Her mind was not affected, but her body was shutting down. Ann was told that she could die after getting pneumonia, or her tongue might suffocate her because she could no longer control it.
In the last three months of her life, I helped Bob care for her. She often said she wanted to have an assisted death, but one day she said once and for all, ‘I want to go now.’
Making the arrangements for Dignitas took weeks to assemble. We needed proof of identity, full medical records, a personal statement, to make payments and arrange travel, decide how to tell friends and make plans for friends to accompany her. On top of all this, we had to consider the risks of police investigation on our return.
Some friends and I accompanied the two of them out to Switzerland. Once we got there, Dignitas staff made it clear there was no obligation to die and they asked her repeatedly if she was sure.
I had known Ann and Bob for 40 years (Picture: Mick Murray)
Her death was peaceful and what she had wanted, but I believe she should have had that choice here in the UK. Ann died earlier than she might have done if assisted dying were legal, as she had to get there while she was still physically able to. Bob mourned her death, but took comfort and pride from her bravery at the end of her life.
Just a few months after Ann died, Bob started becoming out of breath very easily. He was treated for a chest infection, but when his symptoms kept getting worse, he ended up being admitted into hospital.
He was sent for tests and was diagnosed with mesothelioma, an asbestos-related cancer caused by once working as a carpenter’s apprentice. It’s an incurable cancer and can lead to a very painful death.
Sadly, Bob also went downhill very quickly. He received excellent palliative care but it wasn’t enough. He was given so much morphine it would have killed a rhinoceros, but it just didn’t work. I vividly remember him rocking back and forwards in his chair, saying, ‘It feels like my chest is on fire.’ His suffering is etched into my memory of him.
Having witnessed his wife suffering and seeing the peaceful death she was able to have, Bob wanted the same for himself. So in August 2015 I made that trip again with him, but this time, he would not be coming back to the UK with me.
Like I had been with Ann, I was by his side in the final moments of his life as he slipped away peacefully with the sound of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy playing in the background. Watching them both die was awful, but knowing they had the deaths they wanted brought me a lot of comfort. All terminally ill people deserve that choice.
In total, Ann and Bob spent around £24,000. In some ways, they were fortunate to be able to afford it, but that amount of money is out of reach for most people.
Like I had been with Ann, I was by Bob’s side in the final moments of his life (Picture: Dignity in Dying)
For those who can’t afford to go, the other options are waiting for nature to take its course and hoping they don’t suffer too much, or to take matters into their own hands, often in dangerous ways and alone, out of fear of incriminating their loved ones.
I urge MPs and future MPs standing in the next election to take action to fix this.
By going with my friends, I could have faced prosecution for assisting a suicide, a crime punishable by up to 14 years in prison. To me it is a huge injustice that we are criminalising compassion and denying dying people a choice they are calling out for.
My friends aren’t alone in wanting control over their deaths. Recent figures show that British membership of Dignitas is at an all-time high and there was a 44% increase in assisted deaths there last year.
It’s now been eight years since Bob died and still the UK doesn’t give dying people the choice that Australia, New Zealand and much of the US and Europe provide.
If others can have the choice, why can’t we?
It was an honour to be there as my friends died, but it shames this country that we all had to travel at such cost, such risk and in such pain to another country.
When it is no longer a choice between life and death but between a bad, drawn-out, painful end or a better one on our own terms, we deserve the right to make that call for ourselves, here at home.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk.
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