Tag: terminal illness

Dying your way – support the Assisted Dying (No2) Bill

An important moment is coming and everyone needs to think quite hard about it. In just over two weeks time the Assisted Dying (No2) Bill is to have its Second Reading in the House of Commons.

The Bill aims to make medically assisted suicide legal in the UK.

This Bill was originally introduced in the House of Lords by Lord Falconer but it lapsed when Parliament was dissolved for the General Election. It is being revived by Mr Rob Marris MP, who won the lottery for Private Members Bills in the new House of Commons.

The Bill has been very carefully framed and negotiated. Remember that Lord Falconer is a lawyer and former Lord Chancellor. In the Lords there was quite strongly felt debate. It lasted over 9 hours, there were over 100 speakers and two attempts to amend it to worthlessness were resisted, being out-voted by quite substantial margins. It was passed by a majority of two-thirds of those voting.

The Bill is a simple piece of legislation. It has very clear safeguards to prevent misuse of the new provisions. The fear that some elderly people may be exploited and bullied into assisted suicide has been addressed very carefully. Every written application has to be approved by the High Court. Doctors are not obliged to help a patient even to make an application and at every step the patient has the absolute right of withdrawal. Someone seeking to use this as a route to bump off a relative opens the way to life imprisonment.

The Bill’s first real test comes in the House of Commons on Friday 11th September. There will be a debate and a vote. There will, no doubt, be some opposed to the Bill.

There are many cancer patients who would like to see the Bill enacted and to have the option of dying at a time of their own choice. Dying from cancer rarely has much dignity. Even when at home and properly supported by medical and caring staff, extremes of medication are often necessary to control pain and other symptoms. The new NICE Guidance on end-of-life care is explicit about what symptoms might be experienced. It details treatment for agitation, anxiety, breathlessness, nausea and vomiting, “noisy respiratory secretions” and pain. It is not a menu, a list of options from which you make a choice. You might suffer all of them. You will not be in control.

If you would like to see this Bill take its next step through the House of Commons and, hopefully, make its way through Parliament to reach Royal Assent, write to your MP and ask him to join those who will support Rob Marris on September 11th by voting in favour of the Assisted Dying (No2) Bill.

The rod and staff

Being diagnosed with a potentially terminal illness is a shock. Education does not prepare us and culturally it is not a conversation topic. The message can come when you least expect it, sometimes at an age when lifestyle changes are bringing a whole new vista of life’s opportunity into focus.

This situation is a huge challenge over and above the physical demands which come with treatment, or with deteriorating health. This is the valley of the shadow of death, so poetically defined by the writer of the 23rd Psalm – the poem of praise and of comfort made more familiar by the much-loved hymn ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’.

Psalm 23 has a particular resonance as a focus for mindfulness and meditation. You find words of comfort that go far deeper than you might expect. There is a call to your spirit which is conjured up by the images the writer’s words describe. Familiar pictures offer themselves to those who are distressed and upset, firstly as reassurance and then as spiritual comfort.

Increasingly healthcare professionals recognise that physical and spiritual co-exist and comfort can be gained from words. By reaching out to your mind the spiritual can be brought into play. This is not a new idea but it is not always one we think of first when health problems arise. In cancer care the value of spiritual wellbeing has long been recognised though how to support it remains a question.

The psalm assumes our natural goodness. Just reaching out to the shepherd is enough to start the process of healing and help.  There is just the one condition. You can only get help by reaching out to the shepherd with your heart and in your mind. This opens the way to the comforts of green pastures, still waters and the support from the rod and staff. It translates into spiritual strength.

But this is no shepherd carrying a brand or badge which denotes a specific religion. This is the spiritual shepherd of all mankind. The route by which the shepherd is reached can be religious but it can also be a route travelled alone, even in anxiety and fear. There is the certainty in the Psalm “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
 I will fear no evil;
 for You are with me”.