Assisted Death as Treatment

"For all my love of life, I do not fear death. In the early stages of the disease, I fought back hard as long as there was hope for recovery. Only when the pain became too much to bear and it became evident that there was no positive outcome did I turn my focus to managing my own death. I have a strong wish to die with dignity at the time of my choosing."
"I have become a skeleton of the man I was. My suffering is intolerable and unbearable."
Toronto man, 80, father, grandfather

Fred Dufour/AFP/Getty Images/File   Physician-assisted death should be viewed simply as a “treatment for an underlying illness,” lawyer Andrew Faith argued in a case that offers a poignant glimpse at the kind of suffering that can drive someone to plead for a premature end

 

Reduced to a shadow of the man he once was, the man, recognizing what he speaks of as a "wonderful" existence since he arrived in Canada, speaks of the agony of the blood cancer that has now spread into his spine, and that the painkillers given him are not capable of reducing his pain. And nor can he perform any of the most basic of all self-help actions of life without assistance, let alone have control of his bodily functions.

Reduced to a shell, housing an active brain suffused with memories, he knows he has not been given very long to live, a matter of mere months, but his suffering is too intense to bid him to bide his time. He has suffered enough, and at this juncture he feels it is in his best interest and the interests of those who surround and care for him, that his exit from life be accelerated to free him from the physical torment he now experiences.

He has filed an affidavit in a Toronto court supporting his request. He is entirely lucid and more than capable of making a choice of his own volition. By order of a Superior Court justice media has been banned from publishing the man's identity or that of his family, nor of his health-care team. That information has been redacted from the documents presented at court.

His decision to preempt nature's plans for his life-ending was paved by the year-ago ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada, sweeping aside the Criminal Code ban on assisted suicide, for its perceived unconstitutionality. The government has yet to officially change the law, but that process has begun and is due in June; too late for this man and any others in a like position. By appealing to the court he is able to obtain permission to proceed.

When he was diagnosed with aggressive b-cell lymphoma in July of 2012 he underwent chemotherapy. However, its severe side-effects led to hospital admissions, convincing him to put a stop to the treatment. A year later the disease's symptoms became far more aggressive, leading to palliative chemotherapy. By the fall of 2015 a dramatic increase of symptoms caused him severe pain, fatigue, nausea and "profound" weakness.

By the turn of the year in 2016 his decision was made, to choose assisted death. His daughter speaks of her father as an "inherently happy man". His Toronto-based hematologist has stated that his patient whom he has treated since 2012 has no more than three months of life left to him, and that he is himself willing to assist in the administration of the fatal injection.

The doctor has no wish to have his name made public, and that extends to his involvement in this sad case. "Nor do I intend to make providing physician-assisted death a significant part of my practice."
The man's lawyer asked the court not only to approve the aided death, but to make certain a coroner's inquest not result; that the man's death be certified that it is the cancer that was the cause of death, and not a lethal injection of barbiturates.

Lawyer Andrew Faith rendered his view that physician assisted death be considered a "treatment for an underlying illness", in which case, lymphoma should logically be recognized as the cause of death, and not that the treatment be listed as its cause.