Thank you, Mr. Garneau.
Thank you for the opportunity to have our collective voice heard in this forum, where decisions are being made that directly impact our individual lives when we are at our most vulnerable. I'm here to symbolically represent an enormous group of physically disabled people who are making their end-of-life journey. We are the experts who are actually living the MAID experience.
You brought up the word “vulnerable”. After five and a half years of volunteering as an advocate in this field, I've come to understand that medical assistance in dying is so much more than just a series of injections or a self-administered cocktail provided by expertly trained staff during a medical procedure. It is in fact a very broad spectrum of services provided by our medical community at the request of the individual.
First, I want you to envision changing your perception of what a medically assisted death is. Paul, my late husband, was a psychotherapist in private practice. He maintained that if you could make a five-degree shift in your perception, you would see an issue from a very different perspective, one that you had never realized existed. So I'm now challenging you to make that five-degree shift in perspective and look at medically assisted death from a fresh new angle.
I would like to share with you some examples of ways in which the medical community helps people voluntarily end their suffering and die with dignity on their own terms every day across Canada. They are MAID, medical assistants in dying, and yet we don't call them that. Why not? These medical practices have been in use for decades, and in some cases hundreds of years in cultures throughout the world. I call it a “spectrum” of choices, because it flows from a more passive action at one end of the scale to a more hands-on, active role at the other end.
I believe it is our responsibility as a society to educate everyone, in particular those with physical disabilities like me, about what options are available to them in collaboration with the medical community as they make the final leg of their end-of-life journey. This is true people/patient-centred care, care where the individual is in charge of taking responsibility and actively participating in their own plan. I may be physically disabled, but I want to know what my choices are. I want to weigh those options and make an informed decision about what I can choose to do next, in consultation with the experts. I don't want to feel vulnerable.
There is a medically assisted spectrum of choices that a person could make if they only knew they existed.
There's cessation of treatment. There may come a point in a person's illness when they decide that further treatment is of no value to them for whatever reason. It's their decision. It's their choice. No one can decide what is too much suffering except the individual. At this juncture, the medical community and the individual agree to stop treatment, knowing that to do so will ultimately result in their death. This is a form of medically assisted death.
With a “do not resuscitate” order, one can say the same. DNR is a mutually agreed-upon contract between the medical community and the individual. In medical crisis, no treatment will be offered to sustain life, thus leading to the person's death. Once again, this is a form of medically assisted death.
There are self-injected morphine pumps. Before MAID was available, my father chose this option. He knew he was dying and had only a few hours left. He was given a morphine pump and was allowed to make his own decision.
The same goes for voluntarily stopping eating and drinking. Our medical community supports people in a variety of circumstances and eases their symptoms when they choose to stop eating and drinking, knowing that their life will end when they stop.
Palliative sedation and palliative coma are two more examples of medical assistance in dying. The MAID procedure, as we call it today, is one that most readily comes to mind when we think of medical assistance in dying. If we choose to acknowledge that there are other forms, then I suggest we rename these.
By sharing this type of information and changing people's understanding of what a medically assisted death really is, we can educate people with physical disabilities about what their options could be. When people become educated about their rights and options, they can make truly informed decisions: decisions that reflect their own needs and wants, ones that empower them and grant them their human right to die with dignity on their own terms. What an incredible gift to give a person as they transition from this life to whatever comes next.
Most importantly, please remember the three Es: envision, educate and empower. It is imperative that you provide us with the knowledge and the information we need to make our own informed choices: the ones that best meet my—our—individual needs. Empower us to die with dignity on our own terms.