My friend “Catherine” continues to leap from strength to strength in spite of her third cancer operation and having only one lung remaining.    Modern medicine is pretty spectacular, as she trots around with her chemo dose being dispensed from a machine on her waist.   The fact she is so very physically fit has enable Catherine to be quite active in spite of her limitations.   Years of looking after her body have paid off for her in the mature years.  

I suppose it is never too late to start a health program of some sort and perhaps starting off the New Year with a gym membership may well do the trick for you.  From my observation of members within “my” gym, health issues whilst limiting for some, cater mostly for individual’s specific needs.  Many women I’ve spoken to have had cancer, arthritis, chronic back ailments, shoulders and obesity.  There seems to be a program to suit everyone.   But nothing happens unless we make it happen, and turning up to the Gym is a very good start. 

For me personally the gym is a great de stressor, in that it allows me to forget my fears, frustrations and angst.   Because I am too busy concentrating on not falling off the treadmill!.   Seeing a 63 yo balance on one leg, whilst attempting yoga could create hilarity, if anyone is “watching” me, but they’re all too busy trying to stay aloft themselves to worry about anyone else.   And the gym instructors are so very accommodating for all age groups, leaving no one feeling “silly” for not being able to achieve a standard.  Everyone is encouraged to work at their own pace, with the Personal Trainers available for those who need extra motivation.

It is fun and I would suggest to any older person, if you get the opportunity, give it a go.  You’ll be surprised at how good, being physically active can make you feel.  Even if I walk in tired, I walk out feeling uplifted.   It’s a great feeling, being re energized. 

Many, of course, don’t have that luxury either from the physical ability or the financial aspect.  But perhaps even a simple program at home could help tone the muscles and keep the circulation running.  Every bit helps to keep the mind active and for those able to make it to a gym, it can create a network of “friends”…….

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We could consider ourselves lucky when we hear other’s stories.   There is so many cancer stories around I believe the Government is going to have a real battle on its hands to keep a workforce able to sustain the medical requirements for the future.   And then there is the problem of obesity.

A woman who has already had breast cancer herself learns her 30 something brother has inoperably bowel cancer, and later the same day is told her mother has been diagnosed with breast cancer.

Another woman whose daughter died of breast last year, barely 30, has herself been diagnosed with the disease this year.  

From a financial point of view, voluntary euthanasia may well be the saving grace for our future generations.   I know none of my grandchildren will want to spend their working life looking after the terminally ill and frail elderly.   Not when there are computers to play with!…..

Even doctors are acknowledging publicly,  that there will be a health crisis looming if society continues the way it is.  

Our problem in Victoria, it seems, we just mark time with the looming health crisis.  

Another friend,  recently in hospital had no less than six changes of beds as she was moved from bed to bed and floor to floor.   In the end, she did not receive the anticipated operation, yet one set of her doctors had no idea that another set had cried off doing it, as too dangerous!.   Makes one wonder about the basis, on how the decision was arrived at.   Personally it seemed to me,  that to prep some one for an operation and then “cry off” screams of a system in crisis.   Almost like they’d exceeded their budget allocation on that particular day and due to age, the service the lady required,  was dispensable.   Mind you, she went home a lot healthier than she went into hospital but then that also raises the issue of the elderly left to struggle at home alone, not really capable of looking after themselves to the max, due to age and inability to undertake certain tasks that are required in order to maintain optimum health.

Nursing homes in the main, seem to have a reputation that leave the elderly are being dragged kicking and screaming into them.

The other day I was talking to a tradesman, working in a nursing home,  who told me of a rational,  elderly lady sitting in a wheel chair who was literally kicking the front door calling someone,  to be taken away.      He found that episode quite upsetting,  as he could visualize himself in that position.   His experiences working in the nursing home industry,  makes him a total supporter of VE.

There was a newspaper article, sometime this week,  regarding a disabled basketball champion (Age 19/11/05?), named Sandy Blythe, who gave motivational speeches, advising employers on how to make their workplaces accessible for disabled people.   His death, by suicide after a long illness, at the age of 43 has “devastated” Wheelchair Sports Victoria.    

The media didn’t publish the method in case of “copy cats” but suffice to say I too have considered his preferred choice of dying,  because of the lack of a viable alternative.

Referring again to Mr Peter Goers article from the Sunday Mail, South Australia (Refer Additional – Related Readings this week), Mr Blythe showed a lack of courage as euthanasia is the ultimate cowardice.  He tells us we must celebrate, cling to life and cherish it!  

Mr Goers has a friend about 40, who is blind, lives with a kidney dialysis and is fed by a machine and to Mr Goers,  this man is a hero.   He certainly is a hero,  for all that he endures, but let’s not take away the courage it took for Mr Blythe to face the reality of his own situation.   I know nothing of Mr Blythe except what I’ve read in the paper (as well, how he died), but I do know that his level of pain with living,  had become intolerable for him to bear.     Not Mr Goers level of pain tolerance,  but Mr Blythe’s.  Two men, two situations, two differences, two choices.    We, each should respect, the other’s differences.

Much like the choice to die sooner, rather than later.   Death comes eventually regardless.  

What was of particular interest to me,  was that his decision to commit suicide came as a great shock to some people.   Here was a young man of 43, running a successful business, one assumes a happy personal relationship with his partner, Paula Coghlan, yet he choose suicide.   His action, though painful for those left behind, was his alone to take.  

Fortunately for Mr Blythe, he kept his counsel sufficiently to be able to achieve his final act in spite of the hurdles.  It was no act of cowardice.   I hope he was not entirely alone just before he died.   We all need love and support, without judgment necessarily,  for major life – death decisions.  

Mr Peter Goers states that “sensible people don’t want to die”.   Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.   Sensible people actually consider their options and take appropriate action.    Mr Blythe assessed his options.  

For those who “believe”, every Exit door,  is an Entrance,  to somewhere else.   What is to worry about unless you’ve done evil things in this life?   What is to worry about, “dying”?.   Isn’t Heaven to die for?  Some people wait their lives for the experience that death will bring, eternal life.  They spend their whole “this” life, preparing for the next ones.  

Me, I am just living for this life!, my dying will be done, just once.  So I want to do it well.

Mr Goers sees suicide as the “ultimate selfishness”.   But then there are a lot of very selfish people in the world that have absolutely no intentions of committing suicide, and they’re the ones who think only of “me, me. me!”  

I thought 25 yo Mr Nguyen (Tuong Van),  of the infamous Singapore drug deal caught in his own sticky web, exceptionally selfish.   He thought nothing of peddling his heroin for profit.   Should he succeed in receiving a jail sentence only, Australians will believe that there is one rule for them, and quite another for all the other non Australian drug traffickers.   I’ve been to Singapore and anyone who says they didn’t know the ultimate accountability for drug dealing in Singapore, is a liar.  Mr Nguyen in the true definition of selfishness, who chose to try and make a quick dollar at the expense of hundreds of lives.  He got caught!

With addiction, comes a hastened death of otherwise perfectly healthy young people.       

You do the crime, you do the time (knowing it was a death sentence,  if caught)….   I think Australians throughout Asia,  have had enough bad publicity this past year as drug couriers.  We as a Nation are “thumbing our noses” at another county’s sovereign rule, and we think we can continue to plead clemency and ignorance, throughout Asia.   No wonder so many other Countries do not respect the Western way of living.    Is this the twelfth person to be caught within a year?  It will take a death sentence, to be executed to clarify for those considering smuggling addictive drugs.

I found it annoying to learn that a Victorian Politician, Rob Hulls,  has been sent to Singapore with a letter from Mr Bracks. our State’s Premier seeking the have the death penalty commuted to life imprisonment.   Why?   Mr Nguyen broke Singapore’s Laws, knowing full well exactly what he was doing.  

Our tax payers dollars would have been better spent on workshops educating health workers on the full intent of the Medical Treatment Act.   Being asked by a nurse in an emergency department of a major hospital what “VE Member” meant was not reassuring to the patient.    One may assume that VE formed a significant part of their learning curve in an emergency department, but I’ve learnt not to assume anything.   Obviously the nurse had never concerned herself with the possibility of the existence of a Medical Enduring Power of Attorney or similar documentation, in all the patients she dealt with,  in her role as Emergency Nurse.   The one department in a hospital, I feel, that could be expected to be up to date with every individual’s case history for existing patients.

Mr Nguyen was not smuggling a one off dose of Nembutal for personal use,  arising out of a bad medical experience.   It was purely greed.

Drugs, such as heroin, are,  your choice in dying, literally.   I prefer my choice in living,  to be (addictive) drug free. 

I called an ambulance to a car park one afternoon in which two men, one on each side of the car, had suffered drug overdoses.   Their women, crying over them,  frantically trying to resuscitate them!.  .  It was such a common practice, I’m told,  that the ambulance paramedics didn’t even bother with the emergency siren.   I’ll live with that scene in my mind’s eye as Mr Nguyen is hung.  That was a choice,  he made.

At least “the stupid people” (Mr Goers’ words)  in New South Wales sought only the means to a quick and easy death for themselves.  Let’s prioritise definitions of good and evil and get some perspective on which of the two stories, Exit or Nguyen,   deserve a more compassionate and understanding of the issues involved.

A thunder storm is just breaking and I love to see the lightning flashing across the sky.  A clap of thunder usually starts the dogs off!  but they appear to have slept through it.  I had a peke (named Wong) once who would throw himself bodily against the back door until admitted.  He would cringe up against me like a child for the duration of a thunder storm, yet take on a German Shepherd or Rottie , with the stupidity that only bravery brings.

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Yet another bad habit, I’ve developed.   Taking articles from the Age and forgetting to write the date on it. (Age 17/11/05?) Ref News 10. 

Headed: Korp: Setting Record Straight, article written by Claire Miller, I have abbreviated the article.

The Public Advocate, Julian Gardner has tabled his annual report to the Victorian State Parliament naming Maria Korp specifically as every one knew of the case.   He thought it a very good opportunity to educate the public on the due process of how he arrived at the decision, in allowing her feeding tubes to be withdrawn.

Mrs Korp did on August 5th, 10 days after her feeding tube was removed.   She had been in a vegetative state in the Alfred Hospital since February after being left to die, four days in a car boot.  Mr Gardner, appointed by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal,  took on the role of Guardian in April after Mrs Korp’s daughter declined the role.

First there was the decision about whether the husband, who was implicated in the attempted murder be allowed to visit.  (Joe Korp, the husband has since committed suicide by hanging).   Mr Korp was permitted to visit Maria on the assumption, among other issues, that her religious beliefs included forgiveness.

The next issue was whether to continue treatment.   The Office of the Public Advocate consulted widely on Ms Korp’s prognosis.  The tube delivering air to her lungs was consequently removed.

In a strict legal sense, the doctors made the deciding call when they advised Mr Gardner that Mrs Korp’s condition was steadily and irreversibly deteriorating, that they would not resuscitate her in the event of a heart attack. nor administer antibiotics and that her feeding tube be withdrawn.

By law, doctors are not required to provide futile medical treatment, but they still sought consensus with Mr Gardner.   Mr Gardner was guided by the Medical Treatment Act, which says a guardian can refuse treatment if it would cause unreasonable distress to the patient or there are grounds to believe a patient of sound mind would reject it.

Mr Gardner took advice from a Catholic priest and ethicist who said withdrawal of treatment in the circumstances was within Catholic practices.

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Lesson:   Please:   Make sure you have a medical enduring power of attorney and a refusal for treatment certificate completed and duly signed somewhere close that interested parties have immediate access to.  Make sure your doctor knows and respects your wishes, regardless of their own religious viewpoint,  before the event.   

Although I am reliably informed that Doctors must adhere in law,  to the Victorian Medical Treatment Act of 1988, I am yet to learn of a single person that has been held accountable for abusing it.

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.

You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.

Eleanor Roosevelt

My grand daughter turned six years old yesterday and it got me thinking about whether she is now of an age when she will remember her grand parents in later life as a dim memory of fun times we’ve shared.   

We gave her a pair of fairy dolls which she was thrilled with because of their luxurious curly hair cascading over the faces….a blonde and a red head!.   What pleased me in particular was the thought that it can still be the simple things in life that create happiness….. And there was no technology involved!…The child is required to develop her own sense of fun and imagination with her new dolls.  

It reminded me yet again of how,  as children, we made our trains out of match boxes joined twenty or thirty at a time.   (we’d be hard pressed to find a match box these days!)   And a Christmas present for my sister involved having her doll sent to Melbourne for a head of “real hair”….   Heady days indeed for excited little children.    

Now, it seems the common trend,  unless it is the latest whiz bang American creation, Made in China, Advertised relentlessly on TV, , and ridiculously expensive, probably paid for on the credit card, children look askance at their parents.

I begin to understand why my mother always thought the old ways were better……. The toys just appeared under the tree on Christmas morning.    We children took no part in their selection, even to the point that stamps were not provided to write to Santa Claus.  Of course the match box trains quickly replaced the stocking contents in any case, once the novelty had worn off.  Life was so much less complicated, than these days of rampant consumerism.

You’re getting old when you stoop to tie your shoe laces,  and wonder what else you can do while you’re down there!

My friend, due for her hip replacement operation on Friday, has had her operation deferred. Too dangerous to life due to heart complications. Her mobility will now continue to be an issue and, out of need, will result in major decisions on her part, as she weighs her options very carefully. It must be a time in one’s life when having small families or no family becomes of necessity, an inconvenience, as there is limited help from the Local Government Health Services.

Potentially, there is a loss of independence, at a time when immediate family are far too busy with their own lives to be focused on a needy parent. It is the nature of ageing that it brings major changes into our lives. Sometimes a change of environment can be a good thing, particularly if it means ongoing support is very close by. But leaving one’s home sometimes is just too painful a burden to undertake and perhaps unwisely the decision to stay could put one’s health is serious decline should a fall occur while while home alone……

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• Please refer to an additional entry today under Additional – Related Readings, an article by Mr Goers reflecting on the actions of those elderly people who participated in a spot of bird watching while making other arrangements. And, of course, my response to his comments which, I feel, were very biting and unnecessarily brutal for the participants.
• Did they pay $40,000 to develop 20 doses of lethal medicine?…… First I have heard of that figure! At $2000 per dose I know of a new budding black market possibility that will make heroin pale into insignificance. Desperate people, just like addicts will pay a bonus I believe, just to have access to this liquid gold.
• At a stage of life where money ceases to have any significant value except to provide for a good death insurance, who can blame anyone for spending their own money how they see fit. After all, they came into the world with nothing, and will most surely leave it with nothing unless peace of mind, being priceless, is a consideration. Selfish of them, perhaps, in Mr Goers estimation, but it is their right to have choice and dignity in dying options, because Governments have failed to heed their pleas for understanding and compassion.
• Perhaps the figure of $2000 included their air fares, food and accommodation, in addition to the ingredients for making drinks, while waiting for the birds.

On May 21st 2005 the following motions was put to the ALP Victorian State Conference by the ALP Health Policy Committee.   Unfortunately a section of the organisation was able to ensure that these motions never saw the light of debate at the Conference, being one of two that were to be referred back to the Health Policy Committee (the other related to abortion), for further “refinement”.

• 1    That the government amend the Medical Treatment Act to give statutory recognition to advance healthcare directives that extend the right of persons to refuse medical treatment for future conditions (rather than just the present “current condition”) , or alternatively to request particular treatment for a future condition, if they should become incompetent.
• 2    That the government establish a computer record of medical enduring power of attorney and advance directives to allow easy and rapid access by the medical profession in an emergency.
• 3    That the government require all private and public hospitals and other health and aged care institutions to record, on admission of a patient, details of their enduring power of attorney (agent) and their legally binding advance healthcare directive.
• 4    That the government embark on a major awareness program to ensure that both the community and those working in the health industry are aware of the detail in the amended Medical Treatment Act.

I defy any person to show me how these motions,  as presented,  could or would offend or confuse   even the most fastidious policy maker.  They are without any ambiguity, whatsoever.

I was told unofficially that the conservatives were “concerned”.   I want to know about the rest of the Victorian community’s views.  Those of us who are neither religious or conservative or concerned!   Why was a minimal number of people able to stop these Motions getting onto the Floor for debate?.

Why would anyone want to become a Member of the ALP, when deals are done behind closed doors ignoring the input from the ordinary Members at Branch level?.   Repeated requests for an explanation on why these Motions failed to materialize left me feeling stonewalled by my own organisation.   Is there a value in belonging to a Group when the “insiders” Group is selective about who creates the Agenda within the Party?   The Greens and Democrats appear to be so much more socially aware than the Party which I have supported unstintingly since November 11, 19975.   I remain a Member only because I believe that change, away from the ultra conservative position currently popular by some,  will eventually happen.   

I am reassured by the Left, who tell me they are playing a big role in pushing for more innovative and equitable policies and programs.  I am told that at that at the Victorian State Conference they’ll support democratic rule within the ALP and vote for policies that benefit the disadvantaged, protect the environment and build a sustainable economy,

Straight away “the disadvantaged”, include people who want the choice of dying with dignity so that would mean the above Motions should get a healthy airing for public discussion.   Just having their last wishes honoured,  is a very good place to start in assisting the disadvantaged.   The “disadvantaged” include people too sick, frail and elderly,  to visit their parliamentarians to voice their concerns for the future, and other elderly people who feel no one listens to them.  

Let me share Dorothy’s letter to the Green Guide in which she wrote:

• Thanks, Insight SBS for drawing attention to the problems of old age.
• I am 87 years old and getting closer to my demise.  Your recent program on ageing, with its focus on prolonging life, made me even more worried about the time I have before me.
• Now we need to talk about celebrating a good life with a good death.  We give our pets a timely and compassionate outcome out of love – why not us?

The words in paragraph three, have been said a thousand times!  Lesley Martin in New Zealand went to jail for about seven months to ensure her mother could,  at least have as good a death, as my eight dogs over 30 years experienced!   Dying like a dog, can be infinitely better for the individual human dying.

If a person has “Do Not Resuscitate” tattooed on their chest at great inconvenience for their fashion sense, the very least the Victorian Government can do, is ensure the sacrifice was not in vain!   How blunt does a person have to be in stating their preferred options at a medical level?  

Please allow the Medical Treatment Act of 1988 be amended to ensure that the Medical Enduring Power of Attorney of any individual is honoured in law and that a medical health worker’s religious beliefs cannot be allowed to have precedent over the patient’s needs.

It will cost the Government nothing at all, and in fact, will save money by freeing up expensive hospital facilities, staffing and medicines by allowing people a hastened death, which again helps to build a sustainable economy.   We are at all times talking about choice.   A hastened death means limited medical intervention allowing only pain relief.

It is hoped the Motions will be tabled at the next ALP Victorian State Conference to be held December 3rd- 4th, 2005 and this time a properly debated outcome will ensure.

Unfortunately for timing, the Conference is also the weekend my daughter will be married, so I will be unable to attend even as an observer.  ( I wondered if I could quietly slip out and not be missed during the celebration afterwards.  I’d stand out in the crowd in my Mother of the Bride ensemble!   This thought reminded me of how my husband would nick off,  out of a Christmas Work Function to listen on the car radio, to the counting of votes during Elections, in the days before computer technology took all the excitement away and they know a week before the event,  what the outcome will be!)

There will be Delegates from the Right and the Left, of the Victorian ALP representing the Electorate of Goldstein,  so I sincerely hope that with a cross section of views,  at least there will be honesty and integrity in any decision making,  at the Victorian State Conference.  In the May Conference, both honesty and integrity,  were conspicuous by their absence.   Branch stacking debates sapped both energy and the good manners of many Delegates.

Please lobby your representatives of the Victorian Australian Labor Party,  to ensure the voice of compassion and reason replace the bigotry evident at the last Conference.

Always emphasis the word “choice”..

Not all people will want to make a Medical Enduring Power of Attorney, but for those who make the additional effort, it will help make life more enjoyable in the interim, knowing Legislation protects them.

I’ll be dancing on the table tops for another year yet (?)….All is clear from the Oncologist…thank you kindly Professor Richardson.  With the thought,  that if I don’t look after my body and go to the gym, where else can I live? I’m off!

In the field of voluntary euthanasia, the times they are a changing!!!  Come the AGM February 25 2006

No longer will the Voluntary Euthanasia Society of Victoria Inc will be known by a name that left one in no doubt what their core mission was.    Euthanasia understood by all, throughout the world as meaning “A Good Death”, instead the organisation will be known as “Dying with Dignity – Victoria”.  

Palliative Care Health Staff also administer “dying with dignity”, yet the two organisational bodies are poles apart in reality.

One is about achieving law reform for a good death, the other about sustaining life for as long as it takes to die of natural causes maintained by a battery of introduced medical equipment.  Medical technology that maintain a “lifeless” body breathing in a out for years without the recipient ever regaining consciousness.

Good Christians who believe in life at any price would say such a person is dying with dignity!   Who defines, dignity?

Euthanasia had no such ambiguity attached to it’s name.

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The VESV is also to appoint a new President with the standing down,  of Dr Rodney Syme.   I also feel quite sad about his decision,  as I believe his calm and rational approach to his duties made him an ideal person for the job.  I suppose there is some good news in that he will continue on the committee, counseling and workshops.

As the public face of the VESV, Dr Rodney Syme was an excellent example of moderation. (something I’m not!).

Also changing is their address from Prahran to 3/9B Salisbury Avenue, Blackburn, 3130 New phone number is 9877 7677

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HOW MUCH MORE PERMANENT DOES A PERSON WISHES HAVE TO BE STATED, THAN TATTOOED ON THE CHEST??

The latest VESV newsletter also advises us that a tattoo “Do Not Resuscitate” will not help because paramedics will be obliged to provide resuscitation regardless.   

NOT If THE LAW, IN VICTORIA,  WAS CHANGED TO ACCOMMODATE A PERSON’S LAST CONSCIOUS WISH.   

Paramedics revived my mother after 12 minutes minimum of no breathing, to provide another fortnight of anguish and severe distress for at least five other members of the family, including two interstate mercy dashes.   Given their medical knowledge, they knew they were resuscitating a woman to become a vegetable, until she died a fortnight later (it could have been two years!).  

The paramedics knew when they ripped her clothes off and pumpled her chest in front of me, that she had been unconscious too long to be able to lead a normal life thereafter. I had travelled three suburbs to St Kilda,  and still arrived before the ambulance! 

The paramedics should have let nature take its course and allow her to die with dignity.   Instead she lay in a coma for a further two weeks,  with eyes rolling constantly in her head, her tongue lolling in her open drooling mouth.  My memories!!!

I can’t imagine a more permanent statement of your wishes regarding a medical outcome than a tattoo.  It requires no third party to be contacted, it requires no pieces of “lost” papers, to be found after the event, buried under a mountain of medical files,  it put no pressure of any relative to make a decision, it states quite bluntly that this person is not for resuscitation.

I will try very hard to collapse at home alone preferably while my husband is hitting off at the first tee, not the 18th, but in the unhappy event that I should be found unconscious, yet resuscitated against my express wish, I promise sincerely to “haunt” the unfortunate person who would seek to “get help” for me.

I expect to drop dead of a heart attack!   I prefer to drop dead of a heart attack!…I do not want to be resuscitated under any circumstances…..I want a quick death,  for me.  

• And for good measure in case anyone is still under any doubt about what I want for me, yes I do have it tattooed on my chest. Do Not Resuscitate – Thank You – VE Member.  (and a special reader will be pleased to know my “thank you” has a smiley face tattooed beside it,  to soften the impact of the Do Not Resuscitate.)

Of course, with the impending change of name of the Victorian organisation to Dying with Dignity (no longer VE), I can’t be bothered trying to get that part of the signage altered.   The Do Not Resuscitate is what really counts…The “thank you” was in appreciation that my request would be honoured and I was thanking the person standing above my body,  willing them to let me be,  knowing that instinct may well kick in, in the end,  to my disadvantage.

Some days I don’t like me!

Sometimes I find myself becoming as spiteful and vindictive in thought,  as do the Right to Life Lobbyists in action,  who are so convinced that their God’s Will, is the only one worth fighting for. 

As I attend to the preparation for my sixth year of blood tests and scan, and the inevitable question,  that arises for everyone who undertakes this period of being in (and out) of remission, not if,  but when???

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In between 1993 and 2003, four times as many men committed suicide in Australia, as women, according to ABS statistics.   I feel this has more to do with the inequality felt by men in the family law courts., than frail terminally ill people.   Perhaps Governments need to broaden their horizons and leave Exit International do its work for those who have no future at all, except one of pain and suffering.

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Accredited to Aaron Rose, photographer:

 In the Right Light,     At the Right Time,     Everything is Extraordinary!……

People have so many stresses in their lives…. there is the 70 yo plus who must make a decision regarding having her hip replaced which may or may not assist her mobility.  Living on her own mostly, she is afraid she’ll end up in a nursing home, but is that the worst thing that can happen to her?   There is the lady who is riddled with cancer, absolutely determined to live at any cost.  A cost in terms of mental anguish to her family, in particular her only daughter who herself has differently abled children and suffers severe migraine.   There is the young mother of three who must wait a fortnight to learn whether she may or may not have cervical cancer.   A woman in the prime of her life……

An infamous saying is “That Life was not meant to be easy”…. but was it meant to be this hard?….

In these days where cancer alone is so very prevalent, I ask all readers to this site to lobby your Government Representative please for Legislative Reform.  In Victoria, with the ALP State Conference due to be held on December 4th, now is a very good time to allow our voices to be heard.  

It is almost impossible to obtain a bottle of 100ml Nembutal, unless you’re a vet, so the next best options needs to be found.   It could have been Legislative Reform in a more enlightened society, but even this possibility has become a distant dream.

We have to find a way to prevent our desperate elderly from hanging themselves.   There has to be a more humane way for a person to die, than splattered over a railway line.   I know a woman who found the foot of her husband a week after he blew himself up with a gas cylinder, nestled in the bushes 15 mt. away.  This particular incident, is very real, not a story line from CSI.   The wife took about 5 years to recover from the shock, if “recovery” is possible at all.

Surely to God, the Right to Life folks can see the sensibility of Law Reform enabling people to have a dignified death.

And what of the mental capacity of people who find the remains of these very desperate people who one could assume would never have chosen such a painful way to die.  

One could imagine the frail elderly don’t always prepare themselves for a quick death without the proper knowledge of rope thickness, knot procedures, and anything else that makes a vital difference in “getting it right, the first time.”  Overdoses gone wrong…gun shots which don’t hit a vital spot!

Laws are introduced to prevent people from talking about suicide methods, but who if not Exit International can prevent people with a little knowledge, making their already desperate plight worse, with incorrect information.  

Governments may well prevent hastened deaths, but at what cost to the community as a whole.

I heard of a conversation held between two people.   One was asking the other, “how long do you think it is a good time to wait after the decision to die is made, should one wait to see if you’ll feel differently”. 

The general consensus was a week.

With Legislative Reform this conversation and others, would not be an issue.   People now want insurance against being caught too late to help themselves.

I  talked to two ladies in Hospital, telling them a friend of mine teaches Ceramics in a Nursing Home and the staff come back from their off duty time, to assist the students with the craft.   So it is not all bad news…..

Please lobby your Victorian Politician now in time for the ALP State Conference on December 4th. 

Make sure that “your fire in the belly” is of superior quality to that of the Right to Life lobby group.