I have just spent the past hour cleaning out the spam from “Your Say”. One only has to leave it a week and it becomes a major task.  I am sure there must be a way of clicking on a total number of entries and hitting the delete button…Unfortunately my skills do not extend to that level of expertise.   I apologise to any genuine visitors whose comments I have deleted but I usually look for a meaningful discussion point,  or my name being used to clarify the differences.   Charming compliments relating to the website alone is insufficient for me to expose my site to ongoing spam!    Over the past three days I have dropped some 500 messages so all I can say is that some people don’t have enough to occupy their obvious talents should they be used for something tangible. 

Caught between a rock and a hard place, I am again battling with not talking sleeping pills versus wide awake 2.30 am.   I should have been exhausted!    Five hours in the City, standing on Parliament Steps for some 2 1/2 hours together with the Work Choices Rally.   As my intention is to create awareness of the right to choice issues, I believe I am being successful in this as many people come up to me and question me about a range of topics from clarifying Living Wills v Medical Enduring Power of Attorney to symptoms of ovarian cancer.     Some do not sign the Petition but I believe they leave me, at least thinking about the issues, and many do not sign because of their jobs.

I hear the collection of Petition signatures organised by Dignity with Dying Victoria (refer links menu) is coming along nicely.  Please refer your friends to their site to do an online transaction Petition.

I was thinking this morning that Mr Howard’s (Prime Minister) Federal Government Industrial Work Choices is equivalent to Mr Brack’s (Premier) State Government Choices to Die are on “a par” (for the uninitiated in Golfing terms – even)…….Zero Choices!

In the one diary entry I have covered three States,  Western Australia, Victoria and South Australia’s current events for choice and dignity in dying.   

Hooray!  Some common sense in coming into the parliamentary system even if it is in another State of Australia!  Mind you, definition of “terminally ill” is, I believe, when death is expected to occur within a 6 month period.    A resolution to this effect did not proceed past the desk of the Victorian Minister for Heath, Bronwyn Pike.   (See the details of failed, December 2005 and May, 2006,  State Conference Resolutions on the bottom of the opening page of this website.   State Election November 2006 – Make legalisation of living wills an issue please).

Pity though there has to be ruling that no drug will be permitted to hasten death……must make people sufffeerrrr as long as “humanely” possible. Allowing a person to die is seen as a failure by the health system – we are yet to learn that “dying” is an absolute certainty arising out of living.    Can one can be accused of standing by and watching an individual suffer needlessly and perhaps just as importantly, without purpose!…..no hope of a fulfilling life  means departing the scene must be as prolonged and as difficult as possible!!!  Refer to the case of Mark Leigep (details below:)  whose Mother is suing the Royal Adelaide Hospital to allow her son to die more quickly than the authority would otherwise permit,  under their “policy”.    Bureaucracy gone haywire……(and what of the stress endured by the relatives?)

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Last Update: Saturday, June 17, 2006. 11:08am (AEST)

Mr McGinty says the laws are not a path to allowing voluntary euthanasia. (ABC TV)

WA Govt moves to allow ‘living wills’ for terminally ill The euthanasia debate is set to start up again in Western Australia as the Government introduces legislation for “living wills”.

_________________

Lethal injection is murder, Adelaide Mother advised   (Mark Leigep aged 31, brain dead and in a vegetative state can only be starved to death because a hastened death with morphine is Murder! – not a compassionate solution – but murder.   We use the same terminology for a humane act as we do for a crime involving greed, sex, thrills, boredom, and of course, actions arising out of a sense of injustice.   Perhaps the authorities need to consider a new word that covers love, compassion, peace, serenity and most of all, selflessness!

The Advertiser
WED 14 JUN 2006,
By CARA JENKIN

__________________

This morning I will join 100,000 people in a Work Choices Rally because although I am no longer in paid employment, I fear for the choices my grandchildren will be left with as thousands of jobs go off shore and people are expected to work for some $8 or $9 dollars per hour yet maintain the costs of an Australian government taxing system, at a personal level, GST and the petrol taxes, not to mention rates, rents, car maintenance, housing, food, schooling, health costs…..We have become a “service industry country” whose people need a realistic tangible base of employment to survive ongoing.   We have neither a proper manufacturing industry which has all gone to China, India and anywhere else but Australia.    Our defence system is being built on the left over droppings of the USA, and I’ve read somewhere that 80% of our food industry is from overseas!  My grandchildren need choices for living, I need choices for dying……We all need choice for our physical and mental wellbeing to continue.   Australia was once a country of Choice!  Where the word “Imported” sounded exotic – now Australian Made is seen as a novelty!

On Monday afternoon I took myself off to Chapel Street, Prahran, an area well known for its diversified views on social issues and took up “residence” with my placard and petition board outside the office of the Local Politician, Mr Lupton……After perhaps an hour and a half,  a By Laws Officer came and told me to “move on or he’d issue me with an infringement notice of $500 for soliciting signatures for a Petition without a Permit”…It is my way of explaining my viewpoint to open with the words “I am a person in remission with ovarian cancer and am fighting to have the laws changed etc etc….He got the “remission with ovarian cancer” bit before he stopped me, so he knew I was making a genuine political statement outside a politician’s office…..(with the words “soliciting for signatures” he made it sound like I was touting for business!)

I was standing to one side of the footpath, not impeding traffic and not approaching people but rather letting them come to me, with an A3 sized placard on a stick.   I am a 64 year old pensioner with a Sweatshirt promoting yourchoiceindying.com

I thought he was joking and asked “before he moved me on, would he please be prepared to sign?”  He was deadly serious standing in my face, stepping closer and declining the offer said “he didn’t want to issue me,  but he would if I didn’t move”.   

I had been explaining my personal position for some time (about the right for Choice for the individual!) so I suppose sub consciously I was vulnerable to “lose control” which I did big time.   I went into Mr Lupton’s office and took a seat, bawling my eyes out because I couldn’t accept that I could be fined $500 for seeking signatures for Promoting the Right to Choose and have my Living Will’s given statutory recognition.  The staff were very kind and allowed me time to collect my wits again.    I could not believe the By Law’s Officer was correct, in that I was making a Political Statement in a democratic society.

He told me that no one had complained about me but he’d seen me from the other side of the road and made a point of targeting me as being potentially without a Permit….I asked why no one had come up to me (shop keeper?) sooner and told me I needed a permit, if he was correct about a political activist not being treated differently to a profit making entity.

I felt severely aggrieved that not only do I have to fight the politicians to face an unpleasant task of facing their own mortality based on their own conservative beliefs but I had to seek (Stonnington) Council permission before I bared my soul to the general public.

Although distressed I did go to the Prahran Town Hall to ask for the necessary form to apply for a Permit.  Unfortunately I broke down again as I said the words.   Peter, the Customer Service Officer was both understanding and considerate of my distress which by then was very obvious.  He asked for the name of the By Laws Officer which I had no way of knowing but from his demeanor I had been left in no doubt he was seriously going to issue me if I hadn’t moved.  I suppose the fact I thought he was joking didn’t help his disposition towards me.  I just couldn’t believe he was “fair dinkum” in needing a permit for a Petition on a Political Issue, in the face of my obviously serious intent about reform of the Medical Treatment Act 1988.  I had my “chemo” beanie on my head from years ago.

I did receive a City of Stonington Footpath Trading Code and will now contact the City of Stonnington’s CEO to have my understanding of the By Law relating to political statements clarified.    If in fact a permit is required for such activism of a political nature,  by already seriously disadvantaged people health wise, perhaps the Laws need to be revised.  

I have posted under Additional/Related Readings/Facts&Figures. The Sydney Statement of the National Forum on Men and Suicide, dated May 2-3, 2006 which I received from Mensline, a support group available on 1300 789 978 (except mobiles, the cost of a local call) from which the previous entry was sourced.

Dying to be Heard – Trying to tough it out through hard times is the blokey way, but strong and silent all too often ends with suicide as the tragic result.   An article posted under Additional/Related Readings/Other tells of suicide from the male’s perspective.,

I also spoke of the man I shared two and half hours on Parliament Steps, he on a “Hunger Strike” now over 48 hours,  seeking justice (with the return of his family) from the Box Hill branch of The Victorian Human Services Department because of allegations of sexual misconduct in the face of compelling evidence to the contrary.

One of those days where I’ve strayed from the topic of choice and dignity in dying and have focused on aspects of living a fulfilling life.    Referring back to my diary entry for June 10th, this is my response to letters (50 plus pages) received since then, from a person I haven’t met personally.  I revisited aspects of my mother and her mothering of me in this letter.   Mothers are great people, but sometimes they die before they’re told that by their children.  Thank God,  mine didn’t, – No Regrets!

Choice’s Response:

Your letters affected me greatly. Initially I had thought your major concern was a crisis of faith but now I realise that your life in general appears to be in crisis, which is not in my realm of experience.

I am going to say and share issues with you, you will not like necessarily but need to hear.

My personality is a non addictive one, (well almost!) where most things in moderation come easy to me. Yes, I am a very passionate person, but my passions tend to “heal” rather than leave wheals!. I was driven only to achieve something, not to destroy myself in the process.

It would seem, from what you say that you have no understanding that people who set themselves the task to help you find that the more they give, the more you want. Selfishness alienates people. People including the doctors and the carers, can only help so much and then it comes back to you

That creates a dilemma for them, as with anyone who does not contribute to the weight by endeavoring to help oneself, becomes a great burden to carry. In life, other people do not owe us a living and anything that friendship brings is a bonus. Kindness is a gift not a right.

These people who are “helping” you are human firstly before they are “Christian” and I could imagine that sometimes they would find it difficult to remain charitable when you appear to make so little effort to help yourself most of the time. There are very true sayings “God helps those who help themselves” “Mind over Matter!”, and “You Can Do This!”

The very fact that with a bible based faith healing community you achieved peace of mind for eight months would indicate to me that you are able to control your thoughts and emotions. It could be very easy to develop a victim mentality and allow others to take on your responsibilities but hey, do you really want that?

Shit Happens, Get Over It!!
It happens because human beings make mistakes
Your most precious human contact, your mother, being human, made mistakes
I, too, have made mistakes
Those who love me have forgiven my mistakes
You too can choose to forgive Mother’s mistake
It is your choice to forgive your Mother’s mistakes
Not all people demonstrate “love” in the same way
Their love is not less for their lack of demonstration
My mother did the best that she could with the skills she’d been born with
At the age of 10 ½ years I was left physically and emotionally in a desolate place
It took until the age of 53 years of age to acknowledge out loud in a public place
That my mother had “rejected” me.
That, because of her desertion of me, I was not a worthy person
I was not worth loving, because my mother chose to do something else
To go somewhere else, rather than “mother” me.
That, unlike her being the most important person in my life,
I was not the most important person in her life.
I should have been, I wanted to be, But I wasn’t.
Shit happens, get over it!
Years and Years and Years passed
And I lived in that moment of “Rejection”
There were many moments of rejection
But I already had the most precious gift of all from her, my mother,
Life!!
No, life, is wonderful… I can see, hear, feel, touch. I am here in the moment.
What my mother did to me is gone!!! It happened too many years ago.
Not to live in that moment when I was ten,
To acknowledge the grief of that time and all the other times,
And then move on!!!
Sometimes I acknowledged the truth of the comfort that my “memories” gave me.
It was an excuse not to move forward.
That warmth of living with the “memory” gave me the power to stagnate
To continue with “blame”
Everything that went wrong in my life was directly related to my mother’s action.
Wrong!!!! Wrong, wrong, wrong…
And unworthy of the talents my mother left me with….
The ability to make a decision about moving on, letting go, .acknowledging that shit happens, to many people, every day.

Get Over It.
It is the perception of what you think your mother’s intentions were, about any action involving you.
What looks green to one person, may be a different shade of blue, to another
The understanding by one human being, of another,
is their particular understanding. Of how that person is!!
It is only a thought, and a thought can be changed.
If the thought (memory) is not a pleasant one, Move away from that thought that distresses,
And move to a thought that can unstress!!! (a word?)
With my mother, I moved on, to another memory, that I could live with.
I tried very hard to see past the “rejection” capacity of my mother to another point of view.
There is always a positive to a negative
And it can be more convenient for our comfort zone to dwell on the negative
To lay blame for the rest of life’s errors, on what happened many years ago.
No person is all bad, and sometimes it is hard to acknowledge the “good” in a person
Because their priorities and way of doing things, are not ours.
They are allowed to be different, their way of doing, is allowed to be different.
It doesn’t matter if their way of doing is different, it is their way!!!
It is their right to chose their method of mothering.
With my Mother, everyway was different! To what I thought she should be…
Poor woman, she was doing the best she knew how!
And I thought she should be doing “my way!!”
Life is not like that
Shit Happens, Get Over It.
It is important that you do, because, one day, you can realize that you’ve spent a life time despairing over such a small period of your life.
In my case twenty years
When there is so many other things that you have control over in the here and now.!!!
In order to appreciate that most precious gift of all, that your mother gave you,
Life…
Live it now, it won’t come again…and don’t expect it to happen without your input.
Your mother has passed on her genes to you and whether you like it or not, unless you work at it, history will repeat itself….
I chose quite deliberately to do things differently in my life, everything my mother “didn’t do” I tried to provide for…..much of the “stuff” was never taken any further… piano lessons, horse riding, tennis, but mostly “ a good education” was my most precious gift I gave my children.
It enabled them to do whatever they were capable of and wanted to do.
Your mother, too, provided this for you….You are lucky, many of us did not have these gifts (opportunities)
If you look for the good things your mother did for you, there will be many positives…
You just have to scratch the surface of the pain and focus on another thought.
With my mother, she would wrap a hard boiled egg in a tea towel, to keep it warm, when visiting an elderly aunt in a nursing home.
I consciously focused on this positive aspect of my mother’s way of doing things
Every time I remembered standing at the window watching her transport driving down the curved road of the orphanage, bawling my eyes out, being “deserted” not once, but many times over four years….many times she said she’d come and she didn’t!!! I would wait hours and hours and hours by the locked gate waiting for her to come. I couldn’t go to her, she had to come to me!
Shit happens, Get Over It.
Now I was “left” many times…I didn’t feel loved or wanted
My mother kindness with the egg didn’t happen often, but it did happen,
Shit happens, but so do the good things in life.
The egg was the symbol that showed me that everyone has something good in them
My aunty, the beneficionary of the egg, was very happy to receive such a gift in such a soulless place as a nursing home. The egg itself was very small, but its message, massive.
It gave me hope, that particular memory…
I have trouble remembering many redeeming feature of my mother’s character,
But, suffice to say, my husband cried at her funeral in July 1983.
He wears a chain most days under his clothes that belonged to her
I wonder sometimes what engenders such an enduring act, after all these years..
To him, his perception of her was entirely different to mine.
She had not failed him in any way.
It is good for me to remember that her death provokes tears in my husband’s eyes for entirely different reasons to mine.
The thing about the legacy that our mothers leave, is still choice…
To remember them, with the bitterness of regret, of what might have been
Realizing, that the past has already been and gone and will never come again
It cannot be changed
The Past is Past……
But – We do have a choice about the future
It is in our power, and ours alone, how we chose our path for the rest of our lives
We can live the life our Mothers gave us
Or we can continue to dwell on the negatives
Which leave us drained and emotional about unrelated incidents which happen later in our lives.
I am quite sure that if we were to say to our Mothers, “Your actions have hurt us beyond healing,” they’d be mortified. Mothers don’t normally set out to bring hurt and pain to their children, but they live a full life, get tired. Say things they don’t really mean but are responding to a crisis of the moment, do things that you and I as human beings do to others any day of the week. Mothers are human and with human frailties try the best they can…
And mothers can’t be responsible for the actions of the father… Losing a father for whatever reason, be it death, incest, another woman, whatever, it is not of the Mother’s making. We could wish life was different then and what happened was unfair, cruel, and painful. If circumstances were different, we would have been much better off in the care of our father, but it was not the Mother’s “fault” that she was the one left with the burden of children. In choices of parents left to look after us, fate takes a hand.

Like you, there is much that hasn’t been told but just focusing on this subject at three in the morning makes me so aware of how far I’ve come….. I just hope your peace comes to you a lot sooner than mine has come to me…. I love my mother’s memory, she wasn’t a particularly good “mother” as such but she was the only one I had so I can’t measure her performance on a scale of anything!!! And at the end of the day, I realized Love is an unconditional emotion… It doesn’t matter that my mother didn’t “love” me in a conventional sort of way…She gave me the important things in life, the opportunity of life itself….and the challenge of being a different sort of mother to the role model she herself was to me. Just different
Shit happens, but there is always a broom to clean it up.
I got over it!!!

Thank you for the opportunity of teasing out in the written word, my most profound thoughts on what could have been a very distressing process. Instead I feel elated. I feel proud of myself that these words are the truth for me. I sincerely hope they will give you a new insight into where I have been, and perhaps, help you to join me…

It is such a relief to have arrived at the “Got-over-it” Station.

Why don’t we just give Australia to the Americans and be done with it?.   A quick kill for the sake of profit!  When will it end?   Where is the Opposition to the current incessant profit making marketing alternatives,  where even feeding the elderly will take second place to the shareholders.  Any organisation outside of Government is operated for the profit of the shareholder, not the welfare of the customer.  (Akin to the ABC Learning Child Minding Centres, Australians are being overwhelmed from the cradle to the grave, with gospel and evangelical church going in between.)

The Federal and State Governments have it within their power to achieve the means by which an ageing population will not become a financial burden on those taxpayers left the fund the system.   Let those who wish to die sooner rather than later for a variety of reasons, do so with dignity.   Provide now with legislation for those of us who do not want to continue “living” when life itself has no genuine purpose.   Just as Mother Nature intended, prior to medical technology taking us to unbelievable places, allowed us to breathe when we should have died!  Make it about choices for the aged, infirmed, chronic or terminally ill -  not just for existing ailments, together with legal ramifications for non compliance on the healthcare workers.!

My Prayer: God I do hope I don’t live to be an old lady!    Perhaps I can receive a “peaceful pill” along with the frozen pie!  Perhaps! History will repeat itself and it won’t be a problem for me after all.   I feel somehow reassured that Nature, in spite of mankind,  will win in the end!     

Australian Broadcasting Corporation
TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT
LOCATION: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2006/s1664287.htm
Broadcast: 15/06/2006
US aged care franchise sets sights on Australia
Reporter: Peter McCutcheon

© 2006 ABC | Pri

On  June 7th, I wrote about an incident which took place on the 5th, in Chapel Street Prahran, in which a By Laws Officer threatened me with a $500 fine, if I didn’t move on because it was perceived by him “that I was soliciting for a petition without a permit”.

Having written to the CEO of Stonnington, I received a very prompt response, dated June 9th,  from the Manager – Compliance & Response.  His name is Bernard Mulholland.  Council is sympathetic to my situation but rules are rules.   I’m asked if I should want to conduct “my activity” within Stonnington he would encourage me to write the times and locations so “that this can be managed along with competing applications.”

I can’t think Mr Mulholland has any idea how offensive I find my lobbying attempts, within whatever Council it is, to be treated in the same context as applying for a permit to sell scarves or cups of coffee.   I am not a trader and I was specifically saying, I am not peddling any product.   I was calling for political change only!  Free speech is still permitted and I did not approach anyone but spoke only if they appeared interested in my A3 homemade, computer printed board explaining I was for Choice and Dignity in Dying.  Please sign the Petition Here Now.

That Mr Mulholland had the same surname as my mother when she died in 1983, the time I first conceived the concept for Choice,  just compounded the necessity to” step back a day or two” before I responded to him.   My own body clock has been in overdrive and I must take heed at my peril.  

As I consider the need to seek permission to ask people to sign this Petition on behalf of Dying with Dignity Victoria, an obscenity I will not comply with this request of Mr Mulholland.   I refuse to be treated the same as a vendor seeking profit.  

In addition, I wish to place on public record that contrary to the letter received from the representative of the CEO of Stonnington, the By Laws Officer is now saying to his Superior,  he had received a complaint about my stance.  This is in direct conflict with his response to my question when I asked if anyone had complained, he said No, that he’d been in the area about another matter and crossed the road when he noticed me.   

The By Laws Officer has also said he was unaware that I had been caused any distress by his approach.  Most definitely, initially when I thought he was joking of course, it was polite and amiable.  But the minute he moved forward and repeated himself up close, I felt my tears well up as I grabbed my bag and went into Mr Lupton’s Office, immediately in front of me,  where I broke down completely.   The By Laws Officer could not have failed to see my distress unless his job has made him totally immune to humanity itself.   I had to get myself off the street and quickly, but he would have known how upset I became, as it caught me totally aware.   Even as I felt the tears I could not have prevented them. 

I cannot “plan” a time and date because of my personal health issues.  I neither eat nor drink during a two hour stance, and if other issues come up for me, I am flexible with my family matters.   I am just an ordinary individual to nothing to gain personally.  Legislative change will be too late to assist my personal needs and while I acknowledge this, I represent those less frail and unable to withstand the stresses that lobbying politicians creates for the older less healthy of us in dire need of Law Reform.

It is not about putting a needle into the arm to kill oneself, it is about the right to choose a particular path in end of life choices and having one’s wishes respected and validated in law.  Currently it is left to the medical staff, for a final decision,  with Living Wills having no legal status, except to give an indication of what the patients wants.   What the patient wants should be the only consideration in law!   That is why I demonstrate with a placard.  Respecting patient choice, is not legally binding in law yet!

Having placed Stonnington on notice for non compliance I will await with interest under what law it can be perceived I have broken should I venture into their territory again.    That Chapel Street would quickly lose its attractiveness should unfettered access to Chapel Street Precinct be permitted because an aged woman seeks signatures to encourage Choice and Dignity in Dying and encourage awareness in order to have Legislative Change to the Medical Treatment Act 1988, is very doubtful.   I can’t help that I wasn’t born beautiful, but I can’t yet believe that we in Australia have lost the right to make a political statement on a public footpath. 

Unlike the Suicide Materials Related Law introduced in January 2006 which provides for me to be fined $110,000 for speaking on the phone about suicide methods – which both sides of Federal Parliament, Liberal and Labor joined forces to implement,  a $500 threat is peanuts and would remain an outstanding debt should the penalty be applied.        Discrimination against our freedoms just never ends!

And the Health Department spends millions of dollars in “preventative suicides tactics”  Why bother? 

                                                                                    _______________

One thing I forgot to mention about Dr Nitschke’s talk the other night was that, in talking to other Countries, Philip tells us,  they can’t believe that the Federal Government has been allowed to implement the Suicide Related Materials law dealing with the inability to communicate suicide methods outside the concept of the voluntary euthanasia debate.   That Australians, by not listening to the Federal Political Arena,  have given up a fundamental human right of free speech by electronic methods……telephone, email, internet.   That to discuss may be seen as incitement to perform an act that is itself, not a crime eg to commit suicide is not a crime but to discuss methods of doing it, is a crime.   As the more pleasant alternatives are taken away from us people will resort to more drastic measures.

Of course, the difference is that Australia does not have a Bill of Rights.  In the past we called it by another name, eg giving the other guy a fair go.   Fairness is no longer a cultural Aussie belief as consumerism is the new foundation stone on which society stands.

We are being sold a pup with freedoms being eroded in the name of terrorism, and the general public are so self centred on consumerism they appear to be totally unaware of what is going on around them and don’t seem to understand that evil occurs while good men stand by and do nothing.  The SBS TV show “Insight” shows much about the ugliness of how Australian society has evolved and it was interesting to hear the Canadian telling me the other day, how the Australian Federal Government is seen “as bad and quite mean” overseas.  

A law which was peddled in the name of child pornography prevention grew into a law which prevents talking about suicide methods for the terminally and chronically ill, under the guise of electronic communication.

Philip is expecting that certain books will be next on the hit list of access to information.   Including his!

Still, we can be grateful!  Hitler’s outlawing of books and the right to hold a public meeting has yet to be reinvented by our respective Governments working cosily together to ensure a compliant society, prepared to accept anything bureaucracy decides is good for us.

What a day yesterday!.   So exhausting I slept until 10 am this morning, the latest in years.  But my various pains have subsided so the body heals itself again.

I started off the day by going to Monash Medical Centre in Clayton Road, a major Melbourne teaching hospital trying to seek a copy of the pilot project undertaken by the incumbent State Labor Health Department, namely Respecting Patient Choices.  I have yet to see an original copy of the booklet which was issued to a friend.   The phone number provided on the booklet had an answering service and the Minister for Health’s office “will return my call”.

One of the things that concerns me greatly about gaining access to information is that it is inordinately hard to do.  I was referred to four areas yesterday at Monash and finally ended up in McCulloch House, the palliative care unit.   After establishing that the social worker I spoke to had no knowledge of the project (which is dealt with in the Nurse’s Journal Viewpoint (March 2006 Edition of the Australian Nursing Journal) I was in a great deal of physical pain myself with the spleen and liver giving me hell, literally.

Because I am a participant in the needs that I speak of within my website as well as a lobbyist and activist sometimes everything spills over for me and the two become blurred.   I do realise the risks I am taking with my own personal health in the pursuit of trying to obtain legislative change.

Some one with a sense of humor likened me to Voltaire (Refer “Your Say”) in which perhaps it is seen that I sit on the fence, I assume.  But no one who knows me would assume that for me personally I am in any doubt about my own sense of purpose.  It would seem sometimes  what makes me a little different from the norm is that I really do believe in choice for the individual purpose about most things in life.  

But hey, I believe wholeheartedly in the right to a person’s happiness and if it works for the individual let it happen.  Happiness can take many forms, for some it is success, a belief system, an understanding of psychology,  peace of mind, love returned, good health, or making do with what portion of any of the above, you’ve been dealt.  When I cried with pain in my foot arising out of chemotherapy I was thankful to have a foot that could hurt.   Happiness is relative.

I stood for nearly two hours on Parliament Steps late yesterday afternoon prior to the Rationalist meeting.  It was the first day of public standing that I was not approached by a Right to Life advocate, and after the previous Wednesday triple effort,  was aware of it.   When Jesus is mentioned to me I just say my personal experience of four years in a Catholic orphanage was “Jesus” enough for me.   Thankfully perhaps the message is getting through the ranks.

I met up with a lady on holidays from Canada and we talked about the political differences of Labor and Liberal.  Along with many I’ve met, she thought we already had “choice” legally.  I suppose she may have been thinking of the NT legislation as the odd person still believes that Law is in place.  Like the Gay Marriages for the ACT, been blasted out of the water by conservatives, we in Australia are not governed on rights and wrongs, but a perceived morality of a few.  The current war in Iraq is my definition of obscenity, not same sex marriages.    We discussed at length what defines “values” and why the loss of a child’s life in Iraq is just a statistic and yet, bringing about a peaceful death by medically assisted dying is “horrific” in a Christian society (?) Would Christ have approved of the differing selective right for the sanctity of life.  100 apples for $1 in Iraq but 1 apple for $1 in Australia.   Perhaps we need a debate of how values are arrived at.   Thankfully I don’t have to face a wrathful god, in the afterlife,  to account for my values!  I believe all life has equal value. 

Dying and Dignity – What Next? was explained by Dr Philip Nitschke who basically told the meeting what we knew already.   That putting someone else at risk to assist you to die a good and easy death is to put their liberty in jeopardy.   He strongly advises, and with a great sense of humor, our options.  It is acknowledged they are very limited unless we are prepared to either travel great distances or start preparing for our own needs early.

Philip is unable to assist a person to die and will not do so.  Nor does he see that legislative change will make a difference except to marginalize a select group into obtaining relief as a result.    I did say, to the Meeting,  that I believe there is a place for both practical information such as Exit International and also legislative change   The legislation will make life easier for those in nursing homes and confined, unable to attend public meetings for members of Exit.   Exit is fine for the upwardly mobile and engaged – but what of those unable to articulate or communicate their needs.  

I am already aware of the number of people who say they agree with the principle expounded in the DWDV Petition but won’t sign because they’re then recorded on record for holding these viewpoints.   The Law is ignorant of race, color and creed so is the perfect vehicle to bring about protection for their wants and needs.   The Law will only protect those who want protection, and if nothing is recorded then others make choices on your behalf.   A Living Will, for the individual,  should be given statutory recognition.

One gentleman sitting behind me works in a Palliative Care Unit and made the point that Philip treated the matter of dying and dignity as too black and white, without allowing for the grey.  He told the meeting that some patients came in ready to die and within three days was up and about, happy in the knowledge that all had been taken care of at home, the stress had lifted.   I wondered whether it was Monash Palliative that I had visited earlier in the day…..Another said “he’d been into Palliative Care and it was “*****”, and he’d not return to that option.   It was not all that it was cracked up to be.”

Again, I said to the meeting, that I for one, didn’t want to consider Palliative Care, preferring the quick clean break, and perhaps the service provider was speaking from a different perspective to that of a participant    One needs to experience the pain in order to understand fully why people would choose not to go down that particular path again.    Philip really is an excellent leader representing our POV, where without any angst he can say……He believes people are adult enough to make their own end of life decisions, where a peaceful pill was seen as the most effective method of achieving it, should that be what the person wants.

In the train coming home at 9.30 pm, I was reading the book The Last Right?.  It is the book which is reproduced under Related Readings/Books elsewhere on this site and tells of differing Australians views taking sides on the right to die,  The editors are Simon Chapman and Stephen Leeder.  Simon at the time was a sociologist and Associate Professor of Public Health and Community Medicine of the University of Sydney.

Simon shares the experience of the death of his mother in 1984 and from people I’ve met, I fully understood all that he shared with us.  How?  until we are placed in a position, we never will really know how we will react.   We think we know our selves and our nearest and dearest and yet we can still be surprised.

This evening I am attending a meeting organised by the Rationalist Society being held at the Trades Hall, in Melbourne, start time: 6.30 pm with a well known Guest Speaker entitled “Dying and Dignity – What Next?”                                                         _____________

It doesn’t matter which State in Australia,  we refer to – the end result is we are all human beings with sometimes irresolvable issues, in which suicide is seen as a viable option.  Ignoring the reason by State Governments just compounds the desperation people feel in not being listened to.  Sometimes the Counselor needs to be counseled.   It reminds me of a friend of mine who rang Lifeline and after a long distressing phone conversation was eventually referred to the Dying with Dignity Victoria.   Counselors also need constant reminding that not everyone holds a religious faith and that death is seen by some, not only as a sense of relief but also the final act of existence!

In Queensland, they too have their problems as “police count toll on suicide” following an article by Leonie Johnson where three people hung themselves within 10 days, one had spina bifida” (Townsville Region).    As a result of this article appearing in the local paper the following article was published. (Townsville Bulletin June 9, Page 12) 

Suicide Hidden Torment:

RE: the report saying there were 453 suicides in Queensland in 2004 (TB May 29).

I know this is a touchy subject for some especially for those who sadly have had a member of their own family commit suicide.  

I write this letter because the claim that Queensland had 453 suicides in 2004 just does not add up when compared to the other quoted statistic, the claim in the same article by the Police Communications Centre co-ordinator in Townsville that police related to suicide of “at least one a day”.

As an ex nurse both military and public, and having also worked for a well known respected funeral company in Townsville, it has been my experience that there are far more suicides taking place than the average person realises.

Unless the suicide is so spectacular or done in such a manner that police are first led to believe that there are suspicious circumstances, or those who we least expect to commit suicide do because they don’t let others know what they have in mind.   And nobody close to them suspected that they would because they have outwardly presented themselves to friends that all is well.

Yet their inner emotions have been going through a torment of the mind we could never imagine.

Those who call for help seldom if ever actually take their own life (untreated manic depressives would be the exception.) whereas those who are not calling for help seemingly are the ones who do end up in taking their own life, and we are powerless to prevent it.

There are many signs that we can see, and say that person is on drugs, but unless those who we know personally and who are also contemplating suicide speak out and let those who can help them know their innermost thoughts and feelings, we will never be able to help them and all those others who most need professional help and counseling

                                                                                        BRUCE DOUGLAS, Kirwan.

I too believe the suicide rate in Victoria is in excess of what we are lead to believe by official authorities.   I too, had a relative working in the funeral industry.     Recently I was told by a taxi driver that about one person a day “jump off the Westgate bridge”,  and I knew at least one guy, who was a public icon for overcoming adversity, was part of that statistic.  I was also told there is a “safety net” for when work is done on the Bridge.    Even if exaggerated, these figures alone do not equate with an Australia wide statistical figure of 2300 which was what was quoted at the Senate Enquiry for implementation of the Suicide Related Materials Legislation is January 2006.  And what of the bodies fished out of the Yarra not far from the Casino.

Perhaps the authorities need to be honest with the public.   Suicides are the hidden story, like Death, if we don’t talk about it, perhaps it will just go away!   Suicide will not be prevented because of a blanket on public reporting of it.  Like everything that people want, including dying, they’ll find a way to achieve it, regardless of the authorities trying to prevent it.  Like Heroin addiction, the mind is closing down and saying “enough is enough”, the ultimate peace of death and nothingness is what some want.  The Government has not yet found a way of preventing “free will” even if they’ve worked hard to contain “free speech!”

 There needs to be a mechanism in place for people who for medical reasons to be able to die with dignity.   To be able to be prescribed lethal medication that will eliminate the stress and emotional trauma that suicide and attempted suicide creates not only for the patient but for those who find them and their families.

Mr Douglas’s letter was well thought out but I thought there was a major component missing.   There does come a time in a person’s life when “professional help and counseling” are not what the person requires.   Some people have reached a critical stage of suffering in their lives,  where the only relief will be death.    All the “talking and counseling” is rather pointless to a person dying a slow agonising death from their ailment. Words, words, words do not make the pain go away.   

They have three choices, take medication till they can’t function, take less medication and suffer the pain, or the third alternative, take their own life by whatever means is still available (hanging is the most common, because rope will never be taken off the market).   I can’t say that would be my preferred choice of suicide! but with electrical safety switches, medicines that have had the vital ingredients removed and prescriptions now severely limited…..options for suicides are dying!!!   But human beings are resourceful and desperation will enable people to achieve the ultimate prize of a hastened death when they have nothing left to lose.

For every “successful” suicide, there are thirty attempts that fail.   I personally have attended to the slit wrists of a young man who really did just make a cry for help and had no genuine  understanding of how his actions could have panned out.  He was young, handsome, still in the closet  “gay” and felt the stigma those years ago,  that the people in the ACT must be feeling this week.  

Government must address the issue of medically assisted dying if people with severe and intolerable illness like spina bifida. cancers, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, are not going to resort to “hanging themselves” even if that was possible given their fragility.   I remember the nurse at this point, who succumbed to compassion because she couldn’t bear the man’s moaning pain after three weeks.

Then there are those in their eighties who are just so frail and tired of living they wish to die before a nursing home end of life scenario…..many who’ve lead an active life for 75 years just can’t cope any more.   One gentleman wrote me.  he “did the wrong thing” when he “talked to his doctor”, another told me she just wants to die without distressing her family with a messy end!  How civilised would a peaceful pill be for those who are so very weary of living, who without medical intervention would have died sooner.  

There is the story of the 87 year old war veteran, Mr Ralph Williams who says of himself he is an old man, no longer of any use to anyone, twice survived tuberculosis and just wants to die while he had a shred of dignity.  His painful existence is dragging on. 

Another letter I received says it in a nutshell. ” Every individual should be able to make their own choice, even if we disagree with it.  Other peoples views may be different to mine but I would always defend their right to have their view provided to don’t try and force me to accept it.

If they prefer to spend years suffering before death, let them, but they have no right to expect others to do the same all because of their belief and currently that’s how things stand.   This will change in time as our ageing population realises this situation and rejects it , more and more.   Most people I ask believe in Voluntary Euthanasia, a fairly well known fact these days.

                                                                                                                                        name and address withheld

Choice please for those of us, who want control over our end of life serenity.