An unnamed man who was suffering from terminal cancer was left shaking and moaning after ingesting pills to end his life, leaving his daughter, who witnessed the scene, “shaking and crying”.
Making plans to end his life in his home state of California after receiving a diagnosis of terminal cancer last summer, the man told his daughter, 24, he wanted to make use of the law and asked her to help him do so.
Reluctant to see her daughter go through the process alone, the man’s ex-wife, ‘Elizabeth’, agreed to accompany her ex-husband. In California, the End of Life Option Act 2015 permits doctors to prescribe lethal drugs for self-administration to mentally competent patients suffering terminal illness and likely to die within six months.
Elizabeth described the “disturbing” events which took place after a hospice nurse mixed the lethal drugs with a clear juice drink for her ex-husband to consume.
She said “Because the prescription is very bitter, they suggest giving something to drink or some non-dairy sorbet directly afterward to help with the taste. My ex-husband asked for Pepsi. He drank the prescription, looked at us and said, “Oh, that burns! That’s so awful. Why can’t they make it nicer than that?”
“It wasn’t long after he drank the prescription that he started to shake. The hospice nurse, my daughter and I worked together to keep him in an upright position for 10 minutes. This was so he didn’t vomit the drugs back up”.
“After the required 10 minutes, we laid him back on the bed, lifting his legs into place. I stood at the foot of the bed, holding his shaking feet and his legs while my daughter held his hands and quietly talked to him”.
“Shortly after, he started moaning and then, suddenly, he rose up from the bed and a deep guttural sound erupted from him”.
“What an awful way to die”
Elizabeth’s daughter was emotionally affected by the scene and she “began shaking and crying”. Elizabeth said her ex-husband’s shaking and moaning continued for around 30 minutes, after which she and her daughter left the room, leaving the hospice nurse alone with her ex-husband until he died after about 90 minutes.
Elizabeth said her daughter found the experience “terrible”, commenting “Over the following few days, my daughter’s tears really came”.
“She felt misled by the euphemisms and had really expected his passing to be peaceful and calm. At one point, I could see her processing. Then she said, ‘What an awful way to die,’ and started sobbing”.
Elizabeth’s story contradicts the claims of Dr Catherine Sonquist Forest, a family medicine doctor in California, who has assisted in the suicide of “dozens” of people and who described the experience of assisted suicide as “a deep anaesthetic”
“We don’t see any sign of suffering”, she said.
It took him more than 8 hours to die
Kurt was diagnosed with incurable bile duct cancer at 58. This illness caused him immense pain that he found hard to cope with, even with his pain medication. Living in Colorado, assisted suicide was legal and Kurt told his wife that he wanted to make use of the law. “I want to die. Will you just let me go?” he said.
Under the law, Kurt was eligible for assisted suicide as he was thought to have less than six months left to live. Subsequently, he was prescribed a cocktail of lethal drugs and found a pharmacy that was able to supply it in liquid form. They were told that the process from ingestion to death would take two to four hours.
On 16 July 2017, in the presence of a nurse, Kurt stood by his decision and started to drink the solution. However, contrary to his wife’s expectations, he did not pass away peacefully.
“With every sip he’s choking and coughing, choking and coughing”, his wife Susan said.
After 20 minutes, he began to gasp unevenly. It seemed that he had lost consciousness but more than four hours after taking the drug, he was still alive. Frightened, Susan realised that her husband might still be partially conscious and able to hear her. She then called a doctor asking for help.
That evening, more than 8 hours after ingesting the lethal drug, Kurt sat in bed, retched and stopped breathing. Susan said she had not been able to say a peaceful farewell, nor had it been the goodbye they wanted.
Spokesperson for Right To Life UK, Catherine Robinson, said “The grim and traumatic assisted suicide stories recounted by Elizabeth and others should cause MPs currently considering Kim Leadbeater’s dangerous assisted suicide Bill to recoil in horror”.
“This Bill must be voted down at Third Reading.”
