NETWORK CASE REPORT 

 

Editor’s Note:  The following is a brief summary of a typical case.  Names and locale have been changed to protect the privacy of the family.

Barbara J. called.    During the phone interview, she described her situation, which was metastatic breast cancer that had started to spread to her throat and brain.  She had tried every treatment available, including radiation, surgery, chemo, plus many alternative treatments, all to no avail.  She was receiving in-home hospice care, and was taking much pain medication and steroids, none of which relieved her incessant pain.  She was unable to get a good night’s sleep because of the pain, and knew that her condition would worsen.  She did not want to wait until she became completely incapacitated.  Barbara’ daughter lived nearby and was supportive of her mother’s decision for a hastened death.

After Barbara, a member of the Network, sent her medical records, and was told of the necessity for her to obtain needed supplies, her case was referred to our Medical Evaluation Committee.  She was soon accepted for the Network services, and was assigned a  Guide.  After several phone calls and a home visit, Barbara set a date.  An Guide and a Senior Guide flew to their destination from different parts of the country to her two room apartment.  When we arrived, the daughter was there, teary-eyed, but completely supportive.  We asked Barbara if she wanted to go through with this final event.  She was definitely ready, and immensely grateful that she would not have to suffer the final months of her life in pain with her body and mind deteriorating.  She said that she had lived a good life, and was accepting and eager for this ending to take place.  Her daughter, though sorrowful, accepted the decision, as she had seen her mother’s suffering firsthand.

We asked if there were any spiritual concerns.  There were none.  Barbara had taken care of the dispersal of her assets and not told anyone else of her decision.  After further discussion of some details, she said she  was ready to go.  She had tears in her eyes as she expressed her gratitude for the Network and our presence.  Her daughter reiterated the same feelings.

Mother and daughter said their last goodbyes, and the daughter left the apartment as was previously arranged.  We stayed while Barbara prepared the equipment, and asked her one last time, “Are you sure you want to do this?”  She replied, “Absolutely,” and she set in motion her death.  We each held a hand as she died quickly and quietly.  She was blessed to have had this chance to end her suffering, and we felt blessed to have shared her final moments.

23 September 2008 from ABC On Line (Australia)

 

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/09/22/2370707.htm?section=justin

 

 

Suicide note targets ‘bully boy’ prosecutor

A voluntary euthanasia campaigner who was facing a jail term over a man’s killing has used her suicide note to accuse New South Wales Crown prosecutor Mark Tedeschi QC of harassment.

Caren Jenning’s suicide note was read out by Exit International director Dr Philip Nitschke to a voluntary euthanasia conference in Sydney this morning after she took her life last Thursday.

Jenning was due to face a sentencing hearing next month for being an accessory to manslaughter after the fact.

She had imported the drug from Mexico that was used in the 2006 death of former Qantas pilot Graeme Wylie, who she and his wife maintained wanted to die.

“During the trial, I felt persecuted and harassed by Crown prosecutor Mark Tedeschi,” she wrote. “He is a bully boy.”

The 75-year-old cancer sufferer also wrote she felt harassed by a Sergeant working with North Sydney Police.

“I have no trust in the outcome of this matter and have decided to impose upon myself the penalty of death … in a way that I choose and at a time I select,” she wrote.

Dr Nitschke says Jenning wanted her views made public.

“It was her wish that these statements be made clear so that people might better understand why she took the steps she did and chose the path she did,” he said.

Mr Wylie’s wife, 59-year-old Shirley Justins, was found guilty of his manslaughter.

Mr Tedeschi says it is not appropriate for him to comment because Justins is yet to be sentenced. 

Footnote: 

I think it is rather unfair to blame the prosecutor, Mark Tedeschi for “doing his job” and trying to lay perhaps the guilt blame on him as an individual.  He is in no position to defend himself when he is merely executing the letter of the law as it stands today in Australia. That is what his profession requires him to do.   I am quite sure he may have felt even a tinge of sympathy for Caren Jenning as an individual, an old woman with terminal cancer.   What else could he throw at her really except to have her tell the truth about what she had done and why she had done it.   Pleading “guilty” would have negated the need for all the stress and perhaps she would have spent a very limited amount of time in a hospital jail.  

But thanks to her bravery the whole world had an opportunity to be focussed on the bad Australian law as it is today.   Those hypocritical right to life campaigners will only have my respect when they stop sending young people to die in futile wars when Australia itself is under no threat!

Thou Shalt Not Kill doesn’t come with clauses if the RTL are going to try and ram that argument down people’s throats!!!

Both women did what they were accused of, but their reasoning was not to “do harm” but to relieve suffering.   The law as it stands needs to be changed.   Murder (the intentional killing of another human being with malice of forethought) just doesn’t cut the cloth to fit the intent, nor does assisting a suicide by providing a gun, knife, Nembutal, high rise building, or a fast car.   We’d all be in jail for that to be justified.  

I too could have been guilty of a crime recently because I had volunteered to sit with a very timid and frail lady who so desperately wanted to die but didn’t want to do it alone.  Am I guilty of aiding and abetting a (possible) suicide because I had volunteered to sit with her while she took medicine and died at a time of her own choosing? We talked often about her fears and just being able to share with a stranger outside her immediate family brought comfort to a distressed human being.  Yet the law will say we can’t talk of suicide and suicide methods which is why probably so many actually commit suicide for fear of implicating their families!

How many people have rung up the advertised “helplines” and actually felt “helped”…..I was asked to “get off the phone and free up the line for ‘genuine’ cases’ which given the misery I was feeling at that particular time was perioulous for me because I felt so depressed about the political climate for change in accepting people’s rights to be allowed to die with dignity.   Other people may stress about unpaid bills and unemployment, but my stress is very real to me in trying to promote rational understanding by our politicians who can’t seem to comprehend that not everyone shares the conservatives view of life and dying. 

My friend died of natural causes in a hospital without any additional help, but I would not have hesitated to sit with her had she chosen to hasten her own death.  I left her choices entirely up to her, but she always knew that I would have “been there for her” if that was her wish. 

 I believe the law as it stands at the moment is a bad one and needs to be changed.

Like Caren, I was making a conscious decision which I knew was breaking the Australian Law, but the law has no compassion or understanding of what love and friendships and responsibilites to the frail, sick and elderly tired evoke in people.

Unlike words written in a book, we are living, breathing human beings with needs that can out pace dated religious and moral views based on organised religion.

My “religion” is to “do unto others as I would have them do for me”.  I don’t go to church on Sundays and I do not pray to any God although I respect the right of others to do so….I just live my religion to the best of my ability. 

In the book “Between the Dying and the Death”dealing with Dr Kevorkian’s life there is a truism quoted: “

Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of society.   Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence.  Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those that seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change.”  

Spoken by Robert Kennedy

 

 The book is available on the Exit website

I don’t actually understand why the law cannot tolerate a position of killing or assisting someone to kill themselves when we are talking from a position that is basically voluntary euthanasia – A good death, well planned, with loved around a person who is already dying a bad death from the inside out. 

Opponents and vacillators frequently quote the slippery slope and greed of relatives as a reason for prolonging intolerable suffering.

But the law makers can also be very clever and in the same way a car which is both a necessity and yet a killing machine,  is controlled by a driver’s licence, number plates,  laws, coloured lights indicating which way the driver should move so too can society learn how to create effective rules that work while allowing people choices! 

But it does take courage -  just as Robert Kennedy tells it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 With thanks to a woman noted only for her compassionate nature I share this article from a Sydney Newspaper dated September 20th.

at 75 years of age, she left the world a better place for her having lived!

A WOMAN convicted for her role in the manslaughter of the Alzheimer’s sufferer Graeme Wylie has taken her life with the same drug she illegally obtained for him.

Caren Jenning, 75, died alone on Thursday night, the euthanasia advocate Philip Nitschke confirmed yesterday, calling her death “inevitable”.

“It is not unexpected given the treatment and persecution she received at the hands of the legal system in the past few months,” Dr Nitschke said.

Ms Jenning had been suffering from terminal cancer, which had spread from her breasts.

She is survived by her daughter Kate, who had been unaware of her plan, Dr Nitschke said.

A detailed statement by Ms Jenning would be read to a conference on dementia on Monday, he said yesterday.

Her lawyer, Sam Macedone, said he received Ms Jenning’s statement in the mail yesterday.

When police arrived at her home they found a suicide note next to her body, he said. Her death has been reported to the coroner and an autopsy is likely.

He said he believed she did not want to take the risk that she might have to go to jail and probably decided to “go while I can”.

The court ruled Mr Wylie no longer had the capacity to decide to kill himself because of his advanced dementia.

Ms Jenning and Mr Wylie’s partner, Shirley Justins, were due to appear in the Supreme Court next month for a sentencing hearing for their role in his death in March 2006.

During the six-week trial, Ms Jenning had admitted she had travelled to Mexico to obtain the drug Nembutal for her long-time friend days before his death. The court heard she had made a second trip intending to obtain the drug for herself and another member of the voluntary euthanasia movement, but had lost courage and decided not to do so.

Ms Jenning was a member of Exit International, which was founded by Dr Nitschke.

The drug, advocated as the drug of choice by the organisation, was used in Australia by vets but is now illegal. It can, the court heard, be obtained in veterinary supply shops in Mexico.

Ms Jenning had been found guilty of being an accessory before the fact to Mr Wylie’s manslaughter and of importing the drug. Ms Justins was found guilty of manslaughter.

During the court case, her daughter Kate Jennings said her mother, a former English teacher, was a selfless person who had been involved in many causes.

The former head of the NSW Voluntary Euthanasia society, Kep Enderby, said he was shocked by her death. “She was one of the finest people I’ve ever known,” he said.

• Leo Shanahan, Canberra
• September 20, 2008

THE federal Health Minister says doctors should be prepared to take a pay cut if they continue to do work other health professionals are capable of.

As part of the Government’s attempts to overhaul primary health — which she likened to the reforms of Gough Whitlam — Nicola Roxon said doctors should relinquish roles that can be performed by other workers, such as nurses and psychologists.

“Our health system, including funding for health services, is organised almost entirely around doctors, despite the fact that many services are now safely and ably provided by other health professionals — nurses, psychologists, physiotherapists, dietitians and others,” she said.

“Doctors will need to be prepared to let go of some work that others can safely do.”

In a sign of the importance of health reform to the Government’s agenda, Ms Roxon will tonight make the comments to the annual Ben Chifley memorial lecture, an important forum for ALP policy.

While arguing that doctors should be paid more for the work that “demands their complex knowledge and training”, she says if they are not willing to give up jobs to other health professionals they should face a pay cut.

“To ensure this transition, there needs to be an incentive for doctors to eschew less complex work, and focus on the work that does require their high level skills and expertise. Or if doctors don’t want to let go of it, to accept being paid less for devoting their highly skilled and heavily trained selves to less complex tasks,” Ms Roxon said.

The Government has been in a battle with Australia’s major doctor group the Australian Medical Association over plans to give health professionals such as nurses the right to prescribe drugs and claim Medicare refunds.

Ms Roxon said opposition to reforms in health was historically led by the AMA and the Liberal Party and, comparing her fight to that of Mr Whitlam to introduce the forerunner of Medicare, said the situation was no different.

“Whitlam’s proposal was met with strong opposition. As soon as his interest in a universal health insurance scheme became public, the Australian Medical Association voiced its disapproval.

“And what we have seen, over time, is a clear cycle — Labor introduces a signature health reform; it is opposed by the conservatives, and by the medical profession; as it gathers public support, the fight is won; and the Liberals are forced to accept that the reform has won community support and a firm place in Australian society,” she said.

The AMA has warned that reforms being touted by the Government, which will include giving midwives more access to hospitals and Medicare rebates, could cost lives.

Ms Roxon also points to structural failures in Medicare, arguing that while it supposedly provides universal health care it often does not help prevent diseases that hurt the poor disproportionately.

“If you want to judge how affluent a suburb is, you could check its tax returns — or you could look at its medical records. Rates of diabetes, of heart disease, early deaths, infant mortality, how many teeth a person has left — are all clear markers of socio-economic status.

“Medicare has achieved a lot, but it has not achieved all we need it to.”

Article in today’s Age Newspaper On Line News:

Footnote commentary:  Governments only have to cease the endless cycle of maintaining a life in a person who has chosen to die because of their intolerable pain and suffering.  Not to mention to futility of blood tests and all the other wasteful use of good resources that go into maintaining a “finished” life.

Leave the doctors alone and allow patients who want to die, their wish.  In legislating for voluntary euthanasia, there would be sufficient funds to maintain medicare that will look after my grand children’s needs.

The young are, after all, this earth’s future hopes for a better world in which to live.   Currently my daughters have to make choices between specialists, mortgages and food bills, just forgetting the educational expenses incurred.  All sports and recreational requirements, fees and levys to maintain a healthy body still has to be paid for and only last week I provided $100 for one grandchild to participate in an accerated learning program.

Let people die easily instead of pouring millions of dollars into resources of which the recipients mostly don’t have a conscious thought about anyhow!   They lie unwanted, uncared for, patronised, and forgotten by the general society.

Let Pro Choice sick, frail and elderly die with Physician Assistance if at all possible.

If not possible hand it over to either Exit or Dying with Dignity Societies and they’ll sort out the chaff from the wheat!

Most intelligent patients realise it is the nursing staff that keep them alive anyhow, because doctors are so conspicuously absent in both public and private hospital.   And no! doctor,  I don’t believe a patient is any more at risk at being looked after by a well trained nurse than a disinterested doctor who although on call, can’t be readily located.

In Cabrini hospital, nine years ago,  I paid money for a doctor to be brought from one floor to another because there was not one available to service my chemotherapy treatment within the ward I was housed in.   It was treated as a “consultation fee” so really it is hard to pretend sympathy for a perceived greedy profession at one point don’t you think?

I watched Q&A last night with the panel addressing Senator Brown’s Bill into Federal parliament and I know what the problem is. Politicians don’t listen to themselves when they talk! Maxine McKew for Bennalong saying that politicians don’t allow themselves to be “poll driven” even though 80 – 90% of the audience said “yes, the support VE”, yet just this week the Liberals elected a new leader with Turnbull entirely based on the unsatisfactory polling of Nelson. Labor themselves disposed of Beazley for the same reasons!…

Maxine had the audacity to liken VE with Capital Punishment in not bowing to “populist polling” but as one gentleman in the audience pointed out Capital Punishment is a response to a crime, whereas the right to die in a manner of a person choosing should be their ultimate democratic right in a democracy!…

A woman seeking an abortion is a much more effective campaigner for choice than a poor sick frail and possibly elderly voter! Who listens to the elderly…as I watched Abbott gloated with glee that McKee was agreeing with his viewpoints I thought then, You Time Too Will Come! (I can hope, can’t I,? that these law makers get a taste of their own outcomes because they didn’t take the opportunity while they were fit and healthy and could have made the difference!)

Maxine belittled the agony of one individual as if it was something rare, vomiting faeces! until another audience member, a nurse pointed out, that this was the norm for many cancers! Maxine liked the option I feel, that Australians travel overseas to die if that solves their (politicians) problem of not legislating.

 Another contribution shared:

 

Hello Mary , in view of today’s opposition Liberal leadership challenge outcome that saw Malcolm Turnbull anointed as the new opposition leader thus motivates me to forward a copy of my past correspondence to him dated May 30th 2008. for your awareness and interest. 

 

In viewing Turnbull being interviewed on TV throughout the day on more than one station, it was interesting to hear him uphold and quote the very words that I framed into my letter to him and that being “The freedom to choose”.  I feel that this is relevant to our cause and something that organisationally, we should remind him of,  at some timely point-in-time.

 

It was also interesting to hear Turnbull openly state during these interviews, reformist views in his support for reform in the area of discrimation against same sex relationships, a view also reportedly expressed by Brendon Nelson in the past twenty four hours.

 

 

 

Mr Malcolm Turnbull MP                                                                    

Parliament House                                                                                    

Canberra – 2006                                                                                      

                                                                                                                 30/05/2008

 

Dear Mr Turnbull

 

With reference to your Wednesday May 28th 2008 SBS World News appearance regarding the Bill Henson media sexualized art exhibit, I concur with your verbatim replied re; “freedom is what makes this country great”.

 

Consistent with your freedom statement I too harbor strong convictions that it is the freedom to choose in all facets of life that makes us human and life worth living.

 

Being a supporter of Physician assisted Dying (PAD) it’s realistic to say that the requirement for autonomous choice in end of life decisions is becoming more topical, with all past and recent community based surveys indicating approximately 80% majority upwards in favor.

 

Voluntary PAD with an emphasis on the word voluntary, is not simply a choice between life and death, it is a choice between a different way of dying.  For decades, politicians, doctors and the AMA collectively have remained silence regarding this important issue. In so doing they have perpetrated a betrayal of enlightenment concerning a requirement for policy change supported by available evidenced based on PAD medical research.

 

In confronting life’s uncertainties, I expect you to be receptively open-minded to my sharing with you a couple of intrinsic scientific research reports that embrace end of life decision making.  For your perusal and interest I am taking the liberty of forwarding a recent evidenced based report extracted from the British Medical Journal dated 19^th April 2008 headed “Palliative care and euthanasia should be dovetailed” to which I concur.

 

Also for your perusal I will forward an interesting evidenced based 2007 report headed “Oregon celebrates ten years of assisted dying” which corroborates what does and what doesn’t  work with PAD and which has been welcomed by the majority of Oregon’s citizens in meeting the needs for freedom of choice within their community.

 

As a senior person it would be welcomed to see the Liberal Party adopt PAD as the principal of empathetic socialization in order to meet the majority supported surveyed humane needs of a free society. To engender and stimulate debate for what should be an inalienable civil right for all citizens I encourage favorable consideration of the above.

 

Please feel free to circulate the above and following amongst your political colleagues and it is in anticipation that I await a reply at your earliest convenience.

 

 Senior Australian

 

Footnote: Regarding political agendas for VE legislation – Given the glee that Abbott (Liberal) demonstrated on Q&A last night on the question of choice and dignity in dying, when Maxine McKew (Labor) supported everything that’s been said previously by Howard (Liberal) – I don’t like any chances of change because of Leadership!  Look at the Republican Debate how the worm turned for political expediency.          

 

 

 Thankyou to my Interstate contributor in permitting me to share his story

 

Hello Mary thanks for sharing with the group your feelings of both sadness and pleasure at the sudden passing of your aged friend along with your remorse at seeing the Victorian PAD Bill voted down in characteristic style by the Labor side of politics.

 

On the subject of dying we recently attended the funeral of a relative who was diabetic and afflicted with liver cancer.  He was only 64 and after two amputations which was followed by an horrendous dragged out death as a prisoner in the hospital system it was a blessing to the family when he finally succumbed to his illness.

 

Also on a very sad and up-setting situation, a couple of months back my wife received a call from the husband of one of her past high-school class mates who conveyed that she was very ill and in a rehabilitation facility.

 

The story is that whilst a diabetic and having just turned 69 she was leading a very active and happy life until about three months ago where she suffered the failure of one kidney. The GP in referring her to a specialist suggested it could be wise to have the affected kidney removed because if not, it could cause the second kidney to fail also.

 

Upon consulting the specialist the decision was taken to insert a stent in order to revitalise the non-functioning kidney but as warned by the GP this move resulted in the remaining kidney  also failing. 

 

The result of this caused a heart attack and living inland on the north coast the situation dictated she was medi-vaced by helicopter to Brisbane. 

 

 Unfortunately the helicopter was unavailable when needed thus requiring she be transported by ambulance to Brisbane and for some unknown reason to us the trip took over five hours.  With the passing of precious time part of her heart became irreparably damaged. 

 

With non-functioning kidneys and a damaged heart she is now condemned to dialysis every second day and on a heavy regime of medication whereby she cannot even get out of bed. 

 

 Being previously a highly spirited woman she is now very dispirited in the realisation that her life is now over.  With her feet having reportedly turned black she stopped eating and in turn the doctor had a feeding tube inserted via the nose into her stomach, “we must keep up your strength or you might die so as to speak”. 

 

In learning of this has caused my wife much upset where she reflects almost daily how her friend’s life has been reduced to a mere existence.

  

My wife phoned and spoke to her friend’s husband during the week and by all accounts the staff are not caring for her properly, hygiene and privacy wise, and without going into the actual indignities the husband was most upset which also adversely had an upsetting affect on my wife  upon learning of this. 

Whilst the husband is wanting to take her home for in-home care the rehab centre is resisting and it could well be that she will never come out

 

I know from talking to them in the past that they were both in favour of VE but when events like this over-take you one becomes captive within the health system and sadly enough we can become trapped and disempowered as an accidental consequences.

 

After reading your letter I considered that you may be interested in reading this real life sad and depressing story which would equal so many other situations nation wide as we speak. 

 

Mary I just want you to know that our thoughts are with you during this difficult time.  Also I appreciate that whilst you are presently on the ropes, but as you cannot hold a good woman down like you I expect you to soon bounce out of your corner swinging.

 

By for now and until we speak again. 

 

 

Robbed of my living and dying’

September 13, 2008

 

JUST a month before her 31st birthday and half a lifetime since she was diagnosed with debilitating Crohn’s disease at 15, Angelique Flowers was told she had colon cancer. It was so advanced and aggressive she was given only months to live.

 

That was in May. She would have loved to have spent her last days with those closest to her, but another desire was overwhelming. Frightened of a slow, painful death from a total bowel obstruction, this softly spoken Melbourne writer wanted her life to end peacefully and on her own terms.

 

So she regretfully turned away from her loved ones and looked to the internet in search of information about euthanasia and a dose of the lethal drug Nembutal. The search dominated her dying days, and her frustration at Australia’s legal situation led her to film a passionate appeal to the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd.

 

“I don’t believe in stoicism. I freely admit to not being a brave soul who grins and bears the pain and soldiers on,” she says in the video, filmed on one of her last day trips from her hospice bed.

 

“I deeply admire people who rise above the adversity and their suffering. But I haven’t grown from my illness or become a better person from its torments. All I want after 16 years of painful Crohn’s disease and now cancer is to die a pain-free peaceful death.

 

“Because euthanasia was banned in Australia I am denied this right …

 

“We finally have in Kevin Rudd a prime minister who is a person as well as a politician. A man who had the conscience to say sorry to our indigenous people, the integrity to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. I beg the Labor Government to continue beating with the heart it has shown and to ensure euthanasia is made legal once again.

 

“The law wouldn’t let a dog suffer the agony I’m going through before an inevitable death. It would be put down. Yet under the law, my life is worth less than a dog’s.”

 

In the film, Flowers says the stress of having to hide her activity from her family, friends and medical staff made her even more physically ill, and her composure cracks momentarily as she relates how she contemplated violent ways to end her life such as jumping off a building.

 

“I have been robbed of both my living and my dying,” she says.

 

“At a time when I want to spend what good days and precious moments I have left having meaningful time with the people I love, I’ve had to cut myself off, writing questions and notes, making inquiries, doing research.

 

“If euthanasia was legal, I could have ended my days as I chose, finding peace before leaving this world, not panic and more pain.”

 

The video is one of two she filmed in her final weeks; in the second, which lasts an hour and was filmed over three sittings, she explains to her loved ones how her excruciatingly painful condition had meant she could not spend more time with them.

 

For half of her young life the illness had, at its worst, left her bedridden in agony and, at its best, anxious and socially withdrawn.

As her friends studied and celebrated and spent summers at the beach, she had stayed at home, too often sapped of health, energy or confidence to join them.

 

But Flowers was a private person, and kept her disease a secret from many of her extended family and friends for a decade. She was also scathing of the medical profession – her trust eroded by years of conflicting advice and poor bedside manners, and unbearable pain in her last weeks.

 

Flowers gave the films to euthanasia advocate Philip Nitschke and his group Exit International, which she had found in her online research and contacted soon after her cancer was diagnosed.

 

It was through them that she learnt Federal Parliament had overturned the Northern Territory’s world-first euthanasia law in 1996. She also learnt about Nembutal, a lethal drug often used in euthanasia cases, but the idea of a trip to Mexico to obtain it was quickly discarded as the travel would have been too arduous.

 

So, on Dr Nitschke’s advice, she used that Generation X tool, YouTube, to broadcast her appeal for Nembutal.

 

Flowers did secure a dose of the fatal drug, but she never used it. No one knows why – perhaps the fear of implicating family members, or the need to also take anti-nausea drugs to keep the Nembutal down.

 

Her plans for a peaceful death were thwarted when she suffered the feared bowel obstruction. She died on August 19.

 

Her older brother Damian, 34, was with her when she died, and believes she was still in pain despite massive doses of morphine and other painkillers.

 

In her last hour, he held a bowl under his sister’s chin as she vomited faecal matter.

 

“The peaceful ending wasn’t there,” he told the Herald. “From the death she could have had, taking the Nembutal, saying her goodbyes to friends and family, having everyone there for her and being where she wanted to be, compared to what she did actually go through, it just doesn’t bear imagining.

 

“How can that be right? How can society believe terminal patients should be put through awful agonising deaths?

 

“Angelique wasn’t afraid of dying, it was more the way she was going to die that she feared.”

 

While she may not have believed she was brave enough, her family credit her strength with helping them through the ordeal.

 

Damian and older sister Michelle hope her public appeal brings about legal change.

 

This week the Victorian upper house voted down a private member’s bill giving terminally ill people the right to die with the help of a doctor. But hopes are higher in the pro-euthanasia camp for a private member’s bill, introduced in Federal Parliament by the Greens leader, Bob Brown.

 

That bill, on which debate and a vote is expected to be held in the life of this Parliament, seeks to restore the right of the Northern Territory or the ACT to legislate for voluntary euthanasia.

 

Dr Nitschke, who met Flowers twice and intends to forward a copy of her video to Senator Brown and Mr Rudd, described her as an eloquent advocate of euthanasia who was able to distance herself from her own plight.

 

“I found her an amazing and intriguing person … it’s certainly a very powerful voice,” he said.

 

In her videos, Flowers talks also of happier times and her achievements – the fact she rated in the state’s top 7 per cent of students in year 12, and her pride at completing a degree in professional writing despite her illness.

 

She recalls “one of the most wonderful experiences of her life”, a four-month trip to Britain and Europe in 2006, where she travelled with Damian to literary sites, including the James Joyce Tower and Oscar Wilde’s grave.

 

Before she was diagnosed with cancer, she wrote three books of inspiring and humorous quotes, which her family now hopes to have published.

 

“I just want you guys to know that I have no regrets … I would have liked to have done more things in my life but the things I was able to do I am proud of,” she says in her video.

 

This story was found at:

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/09/12/1220857835038.html

 

 And one letter written in response to the article:

 

I was deeply saddened to read, and watch on YouTube, that Angelique Flower’s last days and months were spent almost alone, trying to find a way to a dignified death – a death without suffering and with her family by her bedside (“Robbed of my living and dying” 12-14
September 2008).

 

Saddened that despite living in Australia, supposedly a democratic, first-world country living in the 21st
century, we cannot, in the words of Dr Patch Adams, treat death “with a certain amount of humanity and dignity”. Sadly though, Angelique was not in a minority. There are many people who spend their final days in such a manner, and I would too if I was in the same situation.

Death isn’t something we should be apologising about – there are worse things than death. Take dying, for example.