In the Age Letters to the Editor, 16th February, 2010.

Right to dignity lost due to the heartless

Lindsay writes:

I am sitting in my sister’s home at a small table in the family room.  It’s uncomfortable, but it gives me a view of my mother’s wasted body lying in the bed.   I can hear her laboured breathing as her organs start to shut down.

Every time there is a pause in her breathing, or a rattling cough, my heart skips.

I struggle to go into the bedroom.  I know I will break down when I see those sunken eyes that have become opaque and unseeing, and the body protrusion mapping a face that was full of life and love a few months ago.   And when I feel the parchment like skin that had previously been soft and so comforting for a son to touch.

My mother was a loving and caring woman, full of integrity.  But thanks to heartless laws and lawmakers, she lost something everyone should have a right to; her dignity.

It happened about two weeks ago, when the cancer finally took hold.  She became bed ridden and unable to tend to herself.   When she asked for help, we’d tell her “We won’t let you suffer”,  My mother wanted to die before she struggled through this disgusting suffering death.

But in Australia, she has no rights.   Someone has made this decision for her, condemning her to a suffering end.

Think upon this, you opinionated people, think of someone you love lying dying with a nappy around them.  Imagine their false teeth slipping from their wasted gums and their lips collapsing.  Picture their face like a living death mask.

Every day you see the person as a living corpse, injected full of morphine to ease the pain, Maxolon to stop the nausea;   Serenase to reduce the anxiety….and all this to foster a ‘comfortable death’.  Well there is no comfort, no dignity and no compassion in this death.

I promised my mother I would not let her suffer but I failed her.  I am a coward and will never be able to forgive myself.  I knew how to do it but could not bring myself to do so.

We urgently need to change the law and legalise euthanasia.

My mother died at 5.07 pm on Thursday.

Lindsay McDougall, Brighton

Footnote:   What a terribly moving letter I found this to be.   If only the Physician Assisted Dying Bill had been referred on the Law Reform, people such as Lindsay and myself would have  hope that genuine compassion for the dying is translated into legislation.