Euthanasia cutting reconciliation short

A good friend who volunteers in hospice care is watching developments on the assisted suicide front with alarm. For her, what’s happening in local palliative care and hospice residences is tragic and poses a threat to the men and women she works with day to day.

“I’m terrified for them,” she tells me. “It’s on my mind all the time.”  

Euthanasia is often portrayed as the only answer to unremitting physical pain for the dying. But in all the time my friend has spent with the dying, she’s only seen two instances where pain levels challenged doctors’ abilities.

It isn’t the physical pain that patients need to resolve, says my friend, it’s life. Very rarely do people arrive in hospice with all the details of their life packaged neat and tidy. Every day, hospice workers accompany and work with individuals who are struggling with unresolved relationship or faith issues. Their final days, weeks, or months of life can be an important time for them to reconnect.

Euthanasia threatens to short circuit that process.

My friend has seen dying patients with no loved ones and who only wanted to be left alone undergo profound changes in the last stages of life, reaching out to estranged friends and family, and often to God.

She tells of one patient, an “ornery” recluse, who wanted nothing to do with anyone and was prone to making comments like “this is a good day to die.”

Slowly, however, the resident began to respond to hospice volunteers’ efforts to make a connection. The patient confided in being lonely and friendless. Before long, they opened up about their life and allowed distanced family members to come and visit, reconciling with them.

Before dying, the resident, who had been baptized but fallen away from their Catholic faith, received last rites from a priest.

My friend can tell many stories like that. Which is why it’s so discouraging to see Fraser Health Authority directing all health care facilities to make assisted suicide available on their premises, including hospice and palliative care departments.

Medical Aid in Dying – a gussied-up way of saying euthanasia – is being promoted as a reasonable way to deal with end-of-life pain, whether it’s physical, emotional, or spiritual. No wonder thousands of Canadians have already taken advantage of euthanasia when it was offered to them. If you were dying, lonely, depressed and in pain, and someone offered you what looked like a magic bullet, wouldn’t you be tempted to use it?

Instead, hospice workers help people through the dying process with compassionate care in a comfortable residence that offers everything from support groups to art and music therapy, counselling, and therapy pets, all in hotel suite-style accommodation. “Your room is considered your home,” says my friend. “You don’t have to suffer.”

Hospice workers try to help individuals who fear being a burden to their loved ones, although my friend admits not all her residents have friends and family who will journey with them. “My fear is people who come to hospice without strong family support. It’s too easy for them to choose medical assistance in dying” before they can reconcile with family or God.

As mandated euthanasia makes its way through B.C.’s health-care facilities, she sees the distress that’s growing among health-care workers who are concerned they’ll have to participate. Among hospice volunteers, “no one wants to see it happening … it goes against the whole mandate of hospices.”

She also suspects there will be new casualties – the family members of those who choose to have their lives ended. Many of those friends and relatives are going to have doubts afterward, wondering whether they should have done more to persuade their loved one to choose life.

There’s a huge difference, says my friend, between grieving the loss of a loved one who has died naturally, and one you might have persuaded to live longer.

Fortunately, it’s part of hospice workers’ role to support grieving friends and family after a loved one has died, and they’ll be there to support the loved ones of euthanasia’s victims too.

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Part of our response to the scandal of assisted suicide is teaching people about the importance of end-of-life care to the dying process and the harm that results from cutting it short. If you’d like to share a story of a good death, or an example of what can happen when we pre-empt the final stages,  I’d welcome hearing from you. We’ll withhold names and details upon request. Email [email protected].

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Archbishop Miller statement: Euthanasia in hospices a ‘serious error’
Archbishop Miller homily: True compassion is sharing, not killing