By Eyeview

Self-administered death made easier

Feb 8, 2018 | 4:00 AM

KAMLOOPS — A new drug in Canada will make medically-assisted death easier. It can’t come soon enough.

If I had a terminal illness that made my life a living hell, I would want medical assistance in dying (MAID). Since it has been legal in Canada since 2016, it should be easy. All I have to do is find a doctor who is willing to administer the drugs. And then make sure I’m living in the right place. That’s where things get tricky, as Horst Saffarek found out.

Horst Saffarek lived in a Catholic residential care facility in Comox, B.C. When his lungs began to fail, he wanted help in dying. The publicly-funded Catholic institution wouldn’t allow MAID at their facility, citing moral principles.

Horst was becoming frailer each day and breathing became difficult. His daughter, Lisa Saffarek, told CBC’s The Current:

“It’s scary, you know, especially when you can’t breathe, every moment is scary.”

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Horst was faced with the choice of essentially suffocating to death or he could be transferred to a facility that allowed MAID. He was transferred to Nanaimo where he would have to wait ten days as required by law.

I can only imagine the terror that he was going through: struggling with every agonizing breath and seeing relief being delayed.

“Dad was obviously very frail,” said Lisa Saffarek, “We did need to transfer him. He was ended up, you know, his oxygen levels were falling, and we wanted to try and meet his wishes.”

The transfer from Comox to Nanaimo, an hour and a half ride by ambulance, was gruelling. Horst Saffarek died the day after the transfer without the comfort of MAID.

Not only was Horst Saffarek’s suffering needlessly prolonged, but his family felt anguish as well. Lisa and her sisters had planned to spend the last moments of their father together but they were robbed of that:

“But it just — it took away from us being able to celebrate dad and just to enjoy our last moments with him.”

The law protects doctors by allowing them to opt out of MAID. Institutions have no such legal option. Religious healthcare facilities receive public funding same way that others do. If a procedure is legal, and public funds are involved, how can an institution prohibit it?

In small centres like Comox, religious healthcare facilities are the only ones in town. Because the employees are not necessarily religious, and neither are the patients, the title “religious facility” loses meaning. In reality, they are public facilities with an historic religious origin.

The solution is to take matters into one’s hands. A new drug has been made available to make that happen. Secobarbital, the most common drug used in many countries, is now available in Canada. Unlike existing drugs that can take a long time, secobarbital is fast-acting, doses are a relatively small in volume, and self-administration is easy.

Existing drugs can take hours, even days, to work. They taste bad. They don’t work if they cause nausea and vomiting, or when the patient falls asleep before consuming the large volume required.

For those who suffer from an agonizing terminal illness but live in remote or small communities where there is only one doctor who doesn’t provide MAID, or they live in a care home that decides to flout the law, Secobarbital could provide relief.

Horst Saffarek’s experience leaves me wondering why I should suffer the vagaries of the anachronistic legacy of institutions, and other’s moral values, that impose themselves on my life and death. Whose life is it, anyway?