by Carolle Ralph

Created on: February 27, 2007   Last Updated: May 20, 2007

When my dad was 29 years old, he suffered a knock to the head playing football. It was 1969. His life and our lives were never the same again.
Neurology in those days was not as advanced as it is now. A malignant tumor was diagnosed, he was in a coma for many weeks and then had many sessions of radiotherapy randomly bombarding his brain. He was given six months to live. A year later he was still alive and a new diagnosis of an aneurysm was made.

Tragically, he lived for a further 34 years. Words cannot express the long suffering he experienced over his life. The radiotherapy served to cause a series or relentlessly harsh strokes to both sides of his body. In the latter years of his life, he could not move his limbs, he was incontinent, he could not speak or swallow properly. He was alive but he was not living.

I wish he had not known what was happening to him. The pain and suffering was very hard to bear. The awful frustration of watching a loved one suffer daily with no end in sight. The days turn into weeks, the weeks into months and then the years become decades.

I can't imagine what it is like not to be able to blow my nose, or tell someone I love them. To eat my favorite food and change the TV. To have privacy in the toilet and have some choice over my own life.

My dad was the bravest person I will ever know. Two months before he died, he had had enough. He stopped eating and drinking. The nursing staff wanted to tube feed him, he needed to be kept alive.They had already put in a tube, somehow with his poor useless arm, he had pulled it out. He looked at me with his eyes and I knew what he was saying. A wonderful kind doctor asked me what dad would have wanted? That was when we had to be brave. We knew that dad had suffered enough. After 34 years of being subjected to all manner of medical interventions and indignities, he was making his decision. I and my brother needed to be his voice and say no to the tube feeding.

He died by starving himself to death.

He should not have had to do that. I do not expect you to understand my views on euthanasia, you haven't been on my journey.
However, I believe in the right to dignity and quality of life. Life is about more than simply being kept alive. That is a basic human right and should be respected by governments across the world.
The right to die is as important as the right to live.

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