As I said, I took an overdose when I discovered that my illness was more than just cancer and I would’ve had no regrets, it wasn’t a cry for help. I did not want to be found but my son had gone out to dinner that evening to a local restaurant and had spilled a glass of red wine down his white shirt and he came home and he found me. If he wouldn’t have found me then, who knows? But I have something that I call the great escape;

Why the Great Escape;

Well you go back to the Steve McQueen and the hero bit, but there is a bottle of tablets that I have put together myself that I know will end my life. The chances of me actually taking it is very, very small but I have to have that ultimate control. That ultimate sanction that I can decide because one of my fears is that if I am in too much pain and I am too miserable and every day is a living hell then may be I don’t want to be around any more. And I will make that decision.

Would you call that euthanasia?

No. I would call that taking a practical step to doing something. It’s not euthanasia because euthanasia is taken by others. It’s dealt with by other people. This will be something that I will do myself. And having researched on the internet as to what the drugs that I put together will do I am quite confident that it will do what it needs to do.

Have you got an opinion about euthanasia?

Yes I do have an opinion on euthanasia. Euthanasia per se I am against. I don’t believe it’s the right of anybody else to terminate somebody elses life. However the people that have motor neurone disease, the people that have MS and are in excruciating pain, a lot worse than the pain that I have, they should be able, in conjunction with their partner, to decide that enough is enough and that they should be able to take their own life.

I do like the idea of being able to take a pill if you’ve got to the end of the line and you’re in a lot of pain and discomfort. So from that point of view yes but I still feel you’ve got to be well… you’ve got to be well enough and able to do it yourself, not to ask somebody else to do it for you.

Theres a big debate about that isn’t there, euthanasia and ;

Yes.

– mercy killing.

Yes. It’s very difficult if you can’t do it yourself but I think you cannot put that sort of pressure on one of your nearest and dearest to do it for you. I can understand why the people go out to Switzerland where somebody they don’t know can give them the fatal overdose. But I still think you’re putting pressure on somebody else to do something, for you.

Have you ever thought what you might do in a situation like that?

I think I’d just have to get on with it quite honestly, and I think if I was going to do it myself I think I would have to tell my family as well and get them to agree. If it got to that it would have to be at a point where I could see there was no return, that there was nothing could be done and it was just down hill and it was just going to be pain and then the death at the end of it. To just go quietly to sleep and just lose all that pain and angst. It really does appeal. I must admit.

And he was, he was quite ill and had and was in hospital for treatment and had lost quite a lot of weight and after some time he decided that he really didn’t want any more treatment and decided that he’d rather be at home.

And he lived at that point on his own because his wife, my Aunt had died that year previously. And he has five children, my cousins. And so what they decided to do was that they would try and support him being at home. And I think there was other hospitals; I mean staff who would come in during the day but they decided to have a rota to stay with him overnight,

The family?

The family yeah. And because I was, happened to be Holland at that time I said yeah I’d very much like to come and volunteer to take part in doing that.

So it just so happened that I had volunteered to do that on this Friday night and had arrived after work that I was doing to be greeted by my Uncle as I opened the door, saying, Hello Charlotte, lovely to see you. I’ve decided to die tomorrow

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Had he planned this for some time?

Not that I had been aware of, but perhaps I think he probably had been thinking about it and it may well be that he’d discussed it previously with my cousin, who didn’t seem all that surprised about it. So what had happened prior to my arriving that day was that they had organised for his GP to come and visit him, because in Holland the arrangement was that if you need, wanted an assisted death that you had to have at least two doctors come and talk with you. His GP had known him for a very long time and I think had seen him all the way through the illness, I think he’d only been ill during that, that year, but was pretty ill. And so his GP had come to see him and had agreed that he, you know that there wasn’t any more treatment. He was refusing any more treatment. He was quite, quite ill and felt that he had good grounds for wanting an assisted death.

And then they’d organised for another doctor to come and meet and talk with him also who had agreed that as well. So they had both signed, because I think you have to sign something, they had to give agreement that this could go ahead and they had agreed that that would be the case and that it had been arranged that he, that the GP would come and do the assisted dying with him the following morning at 11 o’clock in the morning.

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So we had quite a chance to talk about it together my cousins and I. And then in the morning my Uncle, we got him out of bed, we helped him to the sitting room and he said, he said, Well if there’s anything you want to ask me, you know this is the time

And and gradually everybody appeared, and then it was interesting because he lived in that, in a quite a modern house that he and my Aunt had moved to but at some, a few years before, and it was full of various things like portrait’s and pieces of furniture that had meant quite a lot to them, and so he went through every single piece of furniture in the, in the room and just told us about the association that he had to that, you know, a portrait that was done of one of his children when they were young and what it meant.

And then we also decided to do some planning about his funeral. So we sat down and he talked about some music that he wanted and music that had meant a lot to him in relation to his wife, my Aunt. And how he thought the funeral should go. So and by then everybody was there.

And then we were all back in the room and he said, Okay, I think it’s time for me to say goodbye to each of you then And so each of us went up and he said something to everyone. And one of my cousins got very upset about it and he said to him, he said, I know, I know it’s very upsetting for you, but for me this is the right thing to do. And I’ve wanted to do this for quite some time. And it just feels like the right time for me to do that And to each of us, and then he wished each person very well for the future and well for their children and, and then he, and then when everybody had had a turn he said to the GP, Okay, please do it now And so the GP then gave him the injection and it was a very quick death actually. I can’t imagine, I mean I know time goes slow when something like that happens, but I think he probably died in about 30 seconds to a minute. It seemed very fast.

Thirty seconds to a minute?

Well it seemed very, very fast to me actually.

Did it seem peaceful?

Very peaceful. Very, very peaceful. And the other thing I think that was so striking about it was the way that my Uncle could take charge of it, because I think during his illness, and I think that often happens when people are ill and you know that they don’t feel that there’s very much that they can do for themselves. They have to turn themselves over, their bodies you know their treatment, other people are making decisions for them.

But this was something that he could do and as I said I’ve never seen anybody die before but there was something about the way he could do that, and the way he could say goodbye, and his ability to take charge of it, I thought it was the most dignified, respectful way of dying. I mean as I said an experience that I just have descriptions of other people’s deaths, you know and I know some people die very peaceful and some people die in very, very difficult circumstances.

Did he have any sort of spiritual beliefs do you know?

Well that’s interesting. He wasn’t a spiritual man; I mean he wasn’t a religious man. I think he was rather anti religion. And I don’t think he was somebody who talked very much about his beliefs other than being rather anti-religion. I think he’d been brought up as a Catholic and probably had become a lapsed Catholic. I think his father had been a Catholic and I think his Mother had converted and wasn’t very Catholic, so I don’t think he’d ever really got connected to religion, but it was very interesting when he was talking about his funeral and the music that he chose a piece of music that was very meaningful for him and his wife. And he, it kind of intimated that something about possibly having some connection to her, so that I don’t know, I really don’t know. But certainly he wasn’t somebody who had a certainty that, that there’d be anything after death. But there was something very, I don’t know, I found it the most moving experience or one of the most moving experiences in my life really, taking part in this. And I guess it made me really question why that wasn’t possible in other places. You know there he was at home with the people he loved, in a way that he could take charge at that point, where he probably felt rather powerless in many other aspects of his life. And the other thing is that I found it very hard to find people I knew to talk about it with, because it was one of the few times that I thought this marks me as somebody who’s Dutch rather than English for example, although I’m, I’ve got like a kind of multiple identity you know because there wasn’t anyone who’d been able to have that kind of experience here in the UK.

When I know I’m not going to be able to cope with life any more, the pain is bad now, I’m on morphine, I get a lot of break through pain. When I get to the pitch where I really can’t cope with anything any more, where my quality of life is totally gone, I will tell my husband I want a really good day out with the kids, which is when hell know that when I go to bed that night I won’t wake up the next morning.

Because you’re going to take control?

Yes.

Have you talked to anyone else about that?

Yes I’ve talked to my GP about it. He wishes I lived in another country because that decision would be helped.

Mmm. This is something I talked about to your friend this morning, and we talked about the Government’s national policy on it,

Yes

On assisted suicide and euthanasia,

Yes

And how theres a lot of debate at the moment about this,

Yes

And I wondered like if you were in control of legislation what would you say should happen?

It has to be really carefully dealt with. I think that you have to really look into it seriously, whether this is the right thing for the right person because I think there is the risk it might be abused. But with myself if the legislation was there then it would be nicer for me so I’m not on my own which I know I will be because I don’t want any of the family here when it happens.

Why don’t you want anyone with you?

Because I don’t want them involved, I don’t want them to get in trouble.

You don’t want them to get into trouble?

No. Which is a tough one.

Mm

But I shall concentrate on the day weve had out beforehand.

Will you explain it to them in a letter or…

I’ve done it already yes. I’ve already written a poem to be read out at my funeral. I’ve written a letter to both my children. In the letter I’ve told them if they’ve ever been angry with me and they’re feeling guilty please don’t because it’s no more angry than I felt at myself. I’ve given them permission to be cross at the end which I think is going to be important for them because they will be angry, they will be cross. They’ll be hurt, they’ll want to know, they’ll be in denial that it’s happened.

You’ve thought about it so deeply and so thoroughly haven’t you?

Yes I’ve, I have because I wanted to stay in control;

Well thank you for telling me all that because it’s such an important,

Yes

Aspect of everything isn’t it?

Yes, yes

And anybody like me tries with difficulty to put myself in your shoes.

Mm

No one can but respect what you said.

Yes. I think if some of these ministers and politicians who are against euthanasia, I often wonder if it was their life or their wife or mother how they’d feel then. I don’t like my child

Oh you mentioned earlier, I think about whether you wanted assisted suicide;

It’s a topical subject at the moment isn’t it?

Yes, yes. I think I would love it, if I could, it would be a comfort to me to think that when I’ve come to a point where I’m clearly dying, I’m not, you know, there is no further treatment available for me and I am… if I am in lots of discomfort;

I would like to be able to say, ‘Can you get my kids to come and see me and maybe,” I don’t know, my friend [name] that’s a minister and “Say goodbye”. And then can you just do it to… what has to be done. Give me an overdose of morphine or whatever it is; Because actually my Mum was in hospital for about three months before she died; And she had sort of raging osteoporosis having taken lots of steroids for another condition. She was in terrible pain and she had made a living will actually;

They had to give her so much morphine in the last few weeks, to be honest she was talking rubbish and coming up with ideas. She told us there was something she wanted to tell me and that she had murdered twelve children. And I said, ”Oh Mum, you know that is your mind playing tricks because of the drugs. You haven’t murdered anybody’;

But she still insisted that she had; And I don’t… I just wish that she could have gone a month or two earlier before she went through all that indignity that is dying really. And I would feel the same about myself. You know, I do (think) that life is very precious and it’s a wonderful world and I want to stay in it as long as I can providing I have some quality of life and as far as I am concerned, you know, clearly there has to be legal agreement and so on but I do hope that some legislation comes in before my time is up.

Can you tell me more what you think the word and the experience of dignity means?

Yes. It’s in kind of practical ways I think. I can remember my Mum being sort of hoicked out of bed and she couldn’t stand herself, and plonked on a commode behind the curtains and then her visitors would arrive and she would be… she was with it enough to be terribly embarrassed;

I just think when you’ve come to that stage, only you know when that is, how bad that has to be. You don’t need to go through those sort of physical indignities of you know, throwing up, being smelly, being incontinent, whatever it might be. I don’t really think about that kind of thing but that would be depressing;

We were talking about the national debate on euthanasia policy and assisted suicide and you said you had an opinion about that?

Yes I do. Yes I have a strong opinion about that. First of all I believe that it is everybody’s right to die as it is their right to live. Now there comes a time I’m sure in my own mind that a person, providing they are in their right mind when they decide, not when it perhaps happens but when they decide, has the right to die.

Now I would like to think that if something happens to me that I become completely incapable of enjoying life then I would want someone to do to me what they would do to any ordinary animal. They would if it was a dog and it was suffering and in pain and couldn’t be a dog anymore, you would say ‘oh pity’ and you would take the dog to the vet. I would hope that I could be taken to a doctor or the doctor would come to me, or would be allowed to and would be able to just put me to sleep, because I think life is only tolerable if you’re alive;

Now what is being alive, now you know, what is being alive? Being alive, for example, being alive is being, for me, is being me. When I’m no longer me what am I? I’m a vegetable and I don’t want to be that I don’t want to be here when that happens. Weve got to bring pressure on our members of parliament. Maybe not individually because we haven’t got the effort or we don’t like feel like it, but our various… like I belong to the local MS society;

I belong to the national MS society, we should bring pressure on them to bring pressure in making it law because, it’s not right for everybody, I understand that, that’s why I say it could only be done by someone when they’re in their right mind and once they’ve done that they obviously knew what they were doing and what they were thinking but there are people, I suppose people with strong Christian conviction, convictions who believe that’s wrong.I understand that and if that’s what they want but I hate this. It’s not very pleasant seeing someone dying and they’ve got two or three days left to live and they’re dying in utter pain and even the strongest painkiller’s not touching them. Through their unconsciousness they’re suffering and you can’t and you’re just keeping them three days longer, a week longer and what are they doing, they’re suffering, terrible.

I said the same when my lovely husband was ill, if I could have given him a tablet I would have done. But that isn’t possible.

Because theres been a lot in newspapers and television about this, hasn’t it?

Yes. If I thought I would be a total cabbage for years on end, I would sell up and go to Switzerland if I could find someone to take me.

That’s what the discussion’s been about, hasn’t it?

Yes, yes.

About how when people become so dependent they need help, assistance, don’t they?

Yes, more than that, more. I don’t see how you should not have assistance. Obviously, if your GP or someone can’t do it or wouldn’t do it, I respect them but I think somewhere along the line someone should help you. What is the point? What is the point? You’re suffering unnecessarily and the cost is… you can end up with the cost… the costs are astronomical and theres no point because theres no end to it.

In some countries, I think it’s Scandinavia, it’s different, isn’t it?

Yes. And Holland there is. My grandson lives in Holland so I know.

Why do you think it’s happened in those countries and not in ours?

Because we so drag our feet here, that’s why. I mean it’s all judgement by people who are able-bodied and they don’t have a clue.

At the moment you’ve probably seen in the media theres a big debate going on about what our national policy should be on euthanasia and assisted suicide have you followed any of that?

Well no, but I have my own thoughts on it obviously as far as I’m concerned with euthanasia… the thing that would concern me- very much is the abuse of it. It could be used in the wrong way therefore I think it requires a lot of careful thought because as we said earlier different people have different ideas and treat things in a different way. To deliberately let someone die or even assist them to die that a very difficult question, my mind goes back to, what was the ladies name Mrs Penny, was it?

Diane Pretty.

Diane Pretty that’s the one yeah. I found that very moving. She went to Switzerland didn’t she and was talk about prosecuting her husband? I’ve never heard any more. Well to prosecute her husband I think that’s a miscarriage of justice to be honest.

So in a way your kind of in support of that?

Yes, in a way yes. I am because of… I think it depends on the individuals again doesn’t it? I mean I think Diane trusted her husband to the ends of the earth I mean what he was doing was of her request so I think the possibilities there were zero but obviously there would be circumstances where abuse could take place. It’s got to be… Very, very difficult one that.

As you say it is very complex?

Very complex. I think you’ve got to judge each case on it’s own merit actually and the people involved.

We talked about all the discussion that’s gone on in the country about euthanasia and assisted suicide?

Yes

Well I wondered what you’re views are on that;

Well as I said in the break I’ve got very mixed feelings on that subject being a Christian person we are told that life is very special and God gives life and God takes life away, but I also believe that there are times and there are cases where I believe that God would not want that person to continue;

Do you mean because of the suffering?

With the… I was just going to say, with the suffering and the… what’s the word I want… quality of life which they probably wouldn’t have any at all. So I don’t think that God would frown upon that happening but of course I mean euthanasia goes for all sorts of things and its not just for terminal illness or anything like that and I think that you’ve got to be very very careful if if this was made law. Legalised. If the quality of life is such that somebody could live it, all be it very frustrating and then I would, don’t think I would like to see euthanasia used in that context. If the quality of life is virtually nil and they have got such an illness diagnosis handicap or whatever, reluctantly I think I would say yes.

You see I mean how do you measure it; What is quality of life for one person is not quality of life for somebody else, and I do wonder sometimes whether you know somebody who does suffer like that perhaps are thinking more about their carers than themselves but they would never let on because they would never want their carer to know;
It’s a big ball game.

I believe you can go to Switzerland or somewhere and theres a beautiful place that you can go and they give you a shot of something and that’s it. That just seems immoral to me. That’s giving another person not only the power to do it but the power of life and death and that doesn’t belong to anybody. No.

And you say that because of your religious faith? Is that right?

In a way, yes it is. It must have been formed by what I believe, but if you sort of ignore the religious side of it, I still don’t think that… that’s the next stop to murder really. And I don’t think people should do that. I’ve enough faith in the palliative care to feel that people shouldn’t have to suffer that much pain; No. I may be wrong. I may be being trite or something but ‘

No, I don’t think so.

But I don’t. I can’t relate to that, no. That seems wrong.