I found Ella Creamer’s article (My mum’s death was slow and painful – she deserved the choice to end her life, 6 April) about needing to have a choice in how our life ends incredibly moving, largely because it so closely mirrored my experience with both my mother, who died in 2010 when I was 19, and my grandmother, who died 10 years later. Both died of cancer.
My mother spent two months in hospital, slipping in and out of consciousness and psychotic episodes while the radiotherapy that was supposed to help her made her brain swell, followed by over a year of partial blindness and constant pain. What struck me was not only that she was unable to choose to end her life with dignity, but that the medical teams fought to prolong it for as long as possible, even when her suffering was extreme. I kept thinking, aged 18, if she were a dog we’d be humane and ease her passing; why do we afford less to humans?
