My Self-Determined Exit
For many of us humble folk, death and dying is the elephant in the room. It will inevitably happen to each of us, and yet it’s the one subject we often reschedule until it is too late. So, when my partner was suddenly diagnosed with a large malignant tumour on his liver, in September 2014, both he and I were stunned, with good reason. He had never drunk alcohol or smoked in his life, his only indulgence was a lifelong intake of diet Coca-Cola. (I draw my own conclusions from that!)
A new diet of chemotherapy in pill form didn’t even touch the ever-growing tumour, so the only winner of that experiment was the pharma industry alone. With pills at 5’000 Swiss Francs a month, he didn’t even lose his hair let alone feel ill. After six weeks, we threw the rest of the pills away and deliberated on the way forward. None of the consultants could even begin to speculate on when the impending end might occur, which left us in limbo on that score. Only one thing was sure, that his health would go severely downhill until the end. By mid-October he could no longer eat anything solid, and in November I simply cared for and watched this once vibrant man disintegrate into a shadow of his former self.
On 5. December, he was transported to hospital and immediately placed in the palliative ward. Five days later, apparently in accordance with hospital rules, I was told to take him home. I argued that he was in the palliative department, which should ensure medical care, spiritual support and help the patient to drift gently into the life hereafter. This large hospital wasn’t having that; they needed all these declining patients to leave the premises after five days. I certainly wasn’t trained to take care of him and he urged me not to bring him home. After much difficulty, I managed to find another hospital, willing to take him. It was all extremely distressing and didn’t reveal the Swiss medical care system as the hub of compassion, towards patients in the twilight of their lives.
In the following days, to my utter horror I witnessed the ghastly, gradual demise of my partner. At this moment, I asked myself why God allows people to go through this process. I’ve owned several beautiful dogs, all of whom I have personally escorted into the next life, by means of a vet’s injection when their pain of old age became too much. It’s the only dedicated and civilised support they required.
This steered me inevitably to reconsider my own provisions to shuffle off this mortal coil. We have in Switzerland the possibility through certain organisations, to register and pay a small annual sum to determine our own time of death. Hence, I and my son became members of the most familiar of these companies, in the case that we might at any time be confronted with a grizzly death, and as little genuine care as my partner had.
This is not purely an egotistical wish on my part. I know, that when my time comes, my son will go through a very hard stretch, because we are extremely close and function together as a devoted team. The very last thing I want for him is to sit through a painful and lingering death, should it come to that. As much as I would wish for a peaceful and painless death, ideally in bed, I have no control over my final act. Should I need it, I am glad that I have the option to take the final steps calmly and with dignity in assisted euthanasia along the forbidding route.
It’s not a pleasant matter, but as macabre as it may be, it will confront us all one day. We may not have the best palliative system in all hospitals in Switzerland, but we do have this facility to make our own emotional and intelligent decisions in death the same as we have had to do in life. This eradicates the prospect of maybe a long and painful languishing with only one finite outcome, for days, weeks or possibly months!
Photo: pexels / Marcos Luis Leonardo