Choice to end your suffering should be yours

I have had the privilege throughout my 14 years of nursing to sit with many people as they take their final moments in this life. Some of them have been ready and accepted death with peace in their heart, others have not been so lucky. Many have battled for months or years with often incurable and painful conditions.

What if with the best will, care and medicine available, you still find life unliveable? Palliative care in my mind is helping individuals with a terminal diagnosis live as well as possible for as long as possible. We are lucky in that modern palliative care, particularly here in Guernsey, is excellent with many options available. There is hospice care, specialist nurses, community nurses and hospital nurses that will all help care for you in your chosen location. But what if you don’t want palliative care?

What if living as well as possible for as long as possible doesn’t actually take you to your deathbed? You may consider that waking up and seeing the sunshine, only to be in tears that your suffering has stretched to another day, discovering new levels of distress, is not how you may wish to live your life. You are watching your loved ones suffer, you are not how you wish to be remembered and your dignity as far as you are concerned is diminished to beyond an acceptable level.

At this point, when you are an adult, with capacity, and the choice to end your suffering at home, with your loved ones, who is anyone else to say that you may not do this?

There will always be people who have their reasons for not wanting anything to do with assisted dying in any way, be it on moral, spiritual or religious grounds. That is their choice. And equally if any medical practitioner wishes to abstain from the provision of such services, on their beliefs, then their wishes should equally be respected.

As a nurse, we are always taught to never put our feelings and beliefs onto others. To respect their individuality and their choice to live how they wish. Why when faced with dying are we prevented from doing the same?

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