“Everybody has to die and it just doesn’t worry me,” says 79-year-old Queensland cancer patient, Marjorie Lawrence. She lists the facts; “only five percent of pancreatic cancer patients live for five years … pancreatic cancer is the only cancer that the survival rate is still in single digits,” and then she says again, “it just doesn’t worry me because everybody has to face it.”
Marj's world, like many others, took a drastic turn the day she found out about her incurable pancreatic cancer and suddenly the next years of her life were unknown. Regardless of the number of days each patient receives, doctors know terminal illnesses largely include pain, discomfort, humiliation and degradation. Marj, now living in Townsville, Queensland, has been one of the ‘lucky’ ones who exceeded expectations and has lived three years post-diagnoses with very little pain; some are not so ‘lucky’.
Unfortunately, in such a situation, experts know that many terminally ill people turn to what is referred to as 'plan B'; a plan for suicide. Marj explained that having six family members die of cancer and see them endure the pain that comes with it, she’s determined to die her own way, in her own time.
“I just sought information that would allow me to end my life quickly and peacefully when I start having pain that I can’t bare and I can’t look after myself. And there’s no cure or getting better. I intend to, you know, help myself die,” she pauses, “and that’s a tremendous comfort for me … I don’t believe I should suffer and I won’t suffer and that makes me enjoy every day that I have… I don’t spoil today by worrying about tomorrow.”
Even Marj’s doctors were astonished at her positivity in the face of such an immense, sensitive topic like death. “I said to my specialist, ‘the reason these people are depressed and anxious is that they don’t know how they’re going to die’.”
But despite her best efforts at positivity, Marj knows when that final day comes it will not be a pleasant one. “I know I can get something to help me die a quick and peaceful death but the trouble is I’ll have to die on my own. I won’t have my family with me or doctors or anybody.” Marj believes that having her family with her when she commits suicide, would lead to them being investigated by police, a burden she doesn’t want to place on them. As so, in her vision of her death, the family will not be with her but will instead be the ones to find her lifeless.
It’s because of this that Marj, and organisations such as Dying with Dignity Queensland (DWDQ), are discussing voluntary euthanasia laws in Queensland. DWDQ president, Sharon Tregoning says that she is pushing for the legalisation of voluntary euthanasia because she believes everyone is entitled to what they personally define as a ‘good death’, “whether it means all the bells and whistles, all the treatments, everything, or whether that’s ‘no, just let me go peacefully’, or a middle road. Whatever that is, I firmly believe that needs to be defined by the individual.”
Tregoning says the organisation’s goal is to introduce laws into Queensland which would allow terminally ill adults to have assistance in ending their life, should they choose to do so, with emphasis placed on their choice.
For Marj, having these laws passed would mean a tremendous amount; it would mean a peaceful, legal death with her doctors and family by her side. She says, “When they diagnosed it the surgeon came around to me in the hospital and he said ‘look I think I can give you a little more time if I operate’. I don’t know what he meant by ‘a little more time’. I don’t think he thought it was going to be very long.”
At age 14 Marj’s parents could no longer afford to keep her in school, but she looks back on the degrees she got at a later point and her eight years of teaching Tafe with only happiness. The Townsville resident insists she had a good life and that she was ‘lucky’.
Once she retired, her and her husband travelled through over 50 countries, including taking three and a half years to cross the US, New Zealand and Australia until her husband fell ill. When they settled in Agnes Water her husband was diagnosed with a terminal illness and six months after moving closer to family in Townsville he passed away.
Now, four months away from her 80th birthday, the mother of three, grandmother of six and great grandmother of nine’s quality of life is decreasing and she lives each day knowing there may not be many more to come. She says, “I didn’t think I’d ever make 80 and I’m just not looking that far ahead at the moment … I feel as if I’m slowly but surely going backwards. I’m getting more and more tired but I haven’t had a great degree of pain as yet, which I know will come to me…. Whether it [voluntary euthanasia law] will be here in time for me, I don’t know”.
Marj’s family are aware of her plans to end her life when the time comes but are not open to talking about it. “Dying and death’s important to you when it’s in your face,” says Tregoning, “if it’s not, we don’t want to talk about it,” but she admits even those so closely affected by it don’t always find it a pleasant conversation to have.
The debate about voluntary euthanasia and assisted dying laws in Australia is not new, with there being 28 attempts at legislation made in the past 20 years. It was legalised in the Northern Territory by the Howard Government in 1995, but the 'Rights of the Terminally Ill' Act did not last. In 1997, Federal Parliament did not explicitly repeal the Act but, instead, altered the Northern Territory's Self Government Act, taking away the Territory's ability to pass any law permitting euthanasia.
DWDQ’s Sharon Tregoning says, “the campaign that was run around that – the misinformation and so forth – I think created a lot of harm and probably put everything back a long long way.”
The most recent discussions about euthanasia have come on the back of Andrew Denton's comment towards Kevin Andrews and Tony Burke, two MPs involved in the change of the Northern Territory's laws in 1997. According to News Corp, in Denton's address to the National Press Club in Canberra this August he said the MPs were part of a force behind the campaign to keep assisted dying laws from being reintroduced in Australia, a campaign which is still at play today.
Denton left his career as a media personality in 2012 with the interest of promoting this need for assisted dying, or voluntary euthanasia, laws within Australia. “How extraordinary is this, to live in a society where it is legally and ethically acceptable for a dying patient to endure a slow, torturous death by dehydration and starvation or to end their life violently and alone, yet it is legally and ethically unaccented for that same dying patient to choose a quick and painless end to their suffering?” he said to writers at News Corp in August.
According to Tregoning, the political debate about voluntary euthanasia has been put into focus in Queensland, as well as almost every other Australian state, now more than ever before. She believes this is because of Andrew Denton, but also because of other places like Oregon and California where these laws have been in places for up to 20 years. As of June 2016, there are assisted dying laws in the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, Colombia, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Luxembourg and in the US states of Washington, Oregon, Vermont, Montana, and California. Australian’s have, a “more global awareness of what’s happening,” she says, and a mould to follow, thanks to these formed laws elsewhere. In Australia, the time is now, says Tregoning, and if the laws aren’t made within the next 18 months she admits that the DWDQ’s members should probably walk away.
“We’ve got an opportunity right now to do something about this … The time is now. We’ve just got to throw everything we can at it, put the hard yards in, and hopefully get this payoff … let’s just know that we’re leaving it all out on the field and hoping like hell that it’s enough … It’s too important. It’s way too important to have an opportunity to make a difference and squander that.”
DWDQ has recently been meeting with politicians to see how many are on board, with ten in support out of the 55 to 60 Tregoning believes they will need. The organisation also has 400 paying members, over 4500 likes on their Facebook page, have recently met with the Queensland Nurses Union and been traveling across the state to hold public meetings.
Email campaigns aimed at MPs and health committees have seen more than 500 emails sent out but the organisation is also realistic in their approach; “We know we’re not going to get everybody and that’s pretty okay … because this issue is about choice. So it’s not about trying to change someone’s mind when they firmly and philosophically believe no.”
Tregoning explained that the assistance in death may occur in two different ways; ‘Physician Assisted Death’, when a Doctor provides the patient with a script that is then filled and self-administered, and ‘Voluntary Euthanasia’, in which the Doctor administers the medication. Tregoning says, “Education is a big part of it – both of pollys [politicians] and the public.”
Tregoning says, “working towards making a difference – that’s pretty huge.” She says, “our beautiful Marj on the committee … she’s already got a plan B in place, she’s got some stuff sorted, but if she could do that legally that’s a huge driver for me. So knowing that we’re doing everything that we can to make a difference for someone like Marj, that’s the good stuff.”
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