RETHINKING DEATH

Daily Mail (UK) - 7 March 2002
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
For ten years I wanted to end it all. Now I’m grateful I wasn’t allowed to.
By Alison Davis

My heart goes out to Miss B, the woman who has appealed to the High Court to have her ventilator removed.

The paralysed former social worker is dependent on the ventilator to breathe for her. She wants it turned off because she believes she has an ‘unbearable quality of life.’ Her doctors are refusing, saying that to do so is against their ethical principles and their duty to preserve life.

I understand completely the despair and blackness which must have caused B to feel as she does because I once felt the same.

I am 47 and was born with severe spina bifida. I am completely dependent on my wheelchair for mobility. I am doubly incontinent and I have the lung condition emphysema which often makes breathing very difficult.

I also have osteoporosis (brittle bones) which has caused my spine to collapse, trapping nerves. This causes extreme pain which is not always controlled, even with morphine. When the pain is at its worst I cannot move or speak. This can go on for hours, and there is no prospect of relief.

Miss B apparently has a one per cent chance of recovering. I have no chance at all. In fact, it is inevitable that my condition (and the pain) will get worse.

Some years ago a combination of the above led me to feel, as Miss B does now, that I couldn’t go on living. For ten years I wanted to die and I made several serious attempts to kill myself.

I hoarded painkillers, and swallowed huge overdoses, washing them down with whatever alcohol I could lay my hands on. I wanted death, and I knew exactly what I was doing.

Fortunately for me, I have friends who were brave enough to intervene, who called 999 and had me rushed to hospital. I was treated against my will more than once.

If euthanasia had been legal, I would certainly have requested it and I wouldn’t be here now. In fact, under the rules that now apply in Hololand, I would have qualified for euthanasia.

But I’ll always be grateful to the friends who saved my life (though I wasn’ t at the time). And I’m especially thankful there was no possibility of persuading my doctors to legally help me die.

Two things helped me realize that, in spite of my many disabilities, life can be sweet.

The first was my friends who refused to accept my view that my life had no value. They helped me re-establish a sense of my own infinite human value, a value which isn’t diminished by being severely disabled and having to depend on others.

The second was that I went to India to visit two children I had been sponsoring through a project to help those with disabilities – children who were to change my life completely. Many are so disabled they can barely manage to crawl in the dust. They are unwanted and despised by their families and communities.

The first time we visited the children, they called me ‘mummy.’ They hugged me and loved me, and, as I was playing with them, I suddenly loved them all, overwhelmingly and fiercely, as if they really were mine. When we left, I said to Colin Harte, my full-time care assistant: “I think I want to live.”

I am completely devoted to my children and have been learning their language, Telugu, for the past seven years, so they can tell me all their problems and worries, their hopes and dreams, just as they would a real mother. I write to them all several times a year in Telugu and love getting their letters.

These days I want to live for myself and for my children. I believe that both they and I and Miss B have infinite value, regardless of our disabilities.

What I wish most for Miss B is that she could have the same sort of support that turned my life around and brought me from the depths of despair. My hope is that she too may find a purpose in life.

Miss B’s solicitor is quoted as saying: ‘She says this isn’t life, and she doesn’t want to live like this. It’s her choice.’

The trouble is that it is not just her choice. To say that death might be in her best interests is to say the same thing about me and my severely disabled children. Once it is established that it is acceptable to cause the death of a disabled person if they request it, no disabled person is safe.

I believe we deserve the same kind of help routinely given to non-disabled people who are suicidal. To accept Miss B’s request is in effect to say that severe disability is a fate worse than death. Thanks to my children I don’t think that any more. And neither do they.

To support Alison’s charity or for further information contact: Enable, 35 Stileham Bank, Milborne St Andrew, Blandford Forum, Dorset DT11 0LE http://www.enable-india.org.uk/