Well, I’ve certainly slowed down this past year with endeavouring to promote choice and dignity in dying.  I am feeling an old lady these days, with arthritis slowing me down physically.   More importantly I suppose is the loss of hope about change occurring in my lifetime.

Whether religious beliefs rears its ugly head and seeks to impose its sanctimonious clap trap on the rest of us, or whether I am plain tired, I don’t know what the future holds in providing choice for the individual.

Repeatedly the neighsayers tell us that introducing legislation that would enable euthanasia to become a legalised relief for chronic and terminal illness is just too fraught with ‘dangers’…..So rather than sit down and work through the issues one by one, the law makers shake their heads and look for easier pools in which to puddle!.

In an Age article Monday, February 15, headed Euthanasia Drug Snares younger Australian…. the author, Julia Medew acknowledges that investigations showed that 11 of 38 cases closed by coroners, the deceased had suffered significant physical illness, deteriorating health or chronic pain prior to death.

The Victorian Institude of Forensic Medicine has found that 51 people across Australia have died from an overdose of Nembutal in the past 10 years!

It’s hardly setting the world on fire at that rate! and yet for importing it to help a loved one die (including yourself) it gets you 25 years jail or a $550,000 fine!

A person doesn’t get jail for committing two or three murders, getting knowingly behind a wheel of a car while intoxicated, and wiping out pedestrians and other drivers and their passengers!!! and yet a woman suffering with breast cannot take the simple step of providing a peaceful death for herself without being treated as a common drug smuggler who kills hundreds with their heroin and crack!!!  Or even an adult child who kills his parents for their assets! Or a son who kills both his parents and sister because he couldn’t use the family car!

Eight deaths showed that Nembutal was imported from overseas, but for 28 no source was established.

Fifteen deaths, the person involved worked for a veterinary clinic so it was assumed the drug came from there.

Some figures provided were six in their 20’s, eight in their 30’s, five 40’s, 14 50’s, 3 60’s, 10 in their 70’s, 3 80’s, and two in their 90’s.     AND SO WHAT!   Good luck to their successful journey to relieve their suffering permanently.  I don’t promote suicide, but I certainly understand its a good method of controlling one’s final barrier to excessive pain and suffering.

There is $110,000 fine for downloading Phillip Nitschke’s “Peaceful Pill Handbook” which basically needs a science degree to be useful, or at the best, a kindly doctor!  Both of which are in short supply on the ground! Fortunately no one has been charged with such an horrendous precursor to seeking tools for a peaceful death.

Most of people who Customs ‘catch’ are only bringing in their own supply.  People who invariably are suffering with cancers of which one in three of us will endure.  Watching the TV shows Customs, many people are caught bringing in kilos of death inducing drugs to MAKE MONEY and PROFIT.  Wereas mostly the frail elderly want a single dose for a single opportunity to end the suffering.

Last week we watched a TV program about four dying people in a Palliative Care Catholic Hospice.  Did anyone else watching the show hear the nurse say, we couldn’t give any more pain killers so it got to a level where the pain had to be tolerated!!!!   Why?  Why can’t people have the dignity to ask for as much pain killer as it takes to eliminate the pain!….

When a person is dying, death is inevitable!  Why prolong the suffering, both for the patient and thier friends and relatives looking on…..

The doctors and nurses talk about ‘compassion’ but limit the evidence of it, to the extent that their patients remain writhing in pain, or unconscious altogether….

It’s a crazy world out there!

Apparently 27 took Nembutal who were simply wanting to end their lives, but I agree with Phillip Nitschke, that while that was unfortunate, the access to correct information was outweighed by the need to care for the vast majority of seriously ill people.   The seriously ill have every bit as much right to expect their needs to be met as the young folk who would commit suicide by any means available to them regardless.

Nembutal surely beats ‘hanging’ oneself in the garage for mum to come home and find, with tongue lolling, face puce and eyes bulging… I know of one case where it took the mother a whole year of her life to recover such a horror!!    .How many kids fail to tie the rope properly and die a lingering death because of that??

I suppose by now organisations such as Lifeline and Beyond Blue have realised that society requires more than just another lot of telephone numbers to ring, when people ring talking of depression.  Practical steps need practical help – perhaps a real person, rather than a voice on the other end of the phone, which really doesn’t give a damn about your needs as a person!

Ah yes!  Nembutal isn’t all bad!