Elderly cancer patient was pushed toward euthanasia, family says

As she rests on her queen-sized bed under a patterned comforter, her shoulders and head propped up by several pillows, 84-year-old Joan Rohoway listens passively to a conversation involving her daughter Pamela, Pamela’s husband Alain Seguin, and a reporter.

The setting is the Seguin-Rohoways’ Surrey home. Joan rests quietly as the three others discuss her rapidly fading health, her quality of life, and – most important – the pressure that Pamela and Alain say medical personnel exerted on Joan so she would agree to be killed under the provisions of Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) protocols.

After several minutes during which Pamela and Alain talk about Joan’s opposition to MAiD, she suddenly speaks. “I want to live,” she says with a light but distinct voice. Her intention made clear, she goes silent.

The declaration brings a smile to the faces of Pamela and Alain, confirming for them that a two-week-long fight they waged with the Fraser Health Authority on her behalf was the correct one. Their story is the latest of several involving inappropriate, FHA-staff-led discussions about MAiD that The B.C. Catholic has reported on in recent months. (See B.C Euthanasia Deaths Approaching World’s Highest, at bottom of story.)

The family’s battle with Fraser Health began in late May while Joan was a patient in the cancer and palliative-care wards at Surrey Memorial Hospital. Alain told The B.C. Catholic that, unbeknownst to him and his wife, an oncologist visited his heavily medicated mother-in-law while she was alone and then initiated a discussion about MAiD.

In a separate interview, Pamela added that when her mother asked about treatment options, the doctor said there were none for her late-stage cancer, but opened up discussion about MAiD. Alain said Joan would never have asked about MAiD and would never have agreed to it. Nevertheless, he said the doctor insisted that Joan had agreed to it.

Fraser Health refused to comment on any aspect of this story. Dixon Tam, a public-affairs consultant with the authority, said only that “we discuss a range of care options with all of our patients.”

Alain and his wife said they were shocked to be told that Joan had accepted MAiD. “I was aghast, I was angry,” Alain said. “It was done so underhandedly. To me, [the subterfuge] was intentional.”

He added, “The way they handled it was poor, where the doctor went ahead and put the idea in my mother-in-law’s head.”

Alain said his family is pro-life and he personally opposes abortion and capital punishment. “I was raised a Catholic and was raised to believe you’re given life by God,” he said. “And the only person who has the right to take that life is God.”

The couple complained to the hospital about the MAiD order, but when they met with a nurse and social worker were told Joan had requested MAiD three times. The MAiD declaration stayed in place, even during the days after they brought Joan home on June 7 for palliative care. (Widowed two years previous, Joan had moved in with Alain and Pamela last September.)

Pamela said that when two new FHA health-care workers visited two days later, ostensibly to check her bed sores, they spoke only about the possibility of Joan’s entering a hospice and accepting MAiD, then threatened to file papers to obtain legal guardianship of Joan if Pamela and Alain continued their opposition.

Pamela said she told the two that she believed they were “pushing death” on her mother, and that Joan would never in her right mind agree to it. “You brainwashed her,” she recalled saying to the two.

The issue was finally resolved two days later with the visit of two new health-care workers. “I think they came to smooth the waters,” Alain said. With Alain and Pamela present, the two asked Joan if she wanted MAiD. “She said, ‘Absolutely not, I want to stay here,’” Pamela recalled. “The two then said, ‘OK.’”

Alain said he is relieved he and his wife can now focus their attention on ensuring Joan’s final weeks are comfortable and the battle with Fraser Health has ended. “But,” he said, “the level of trust we have with Fraser Health is about zero.” Added Pamela, “They are just writing her off.”

With this past spring’s liberalization of MAiD rules in Canada, pro-life advocates such as Dr. Will Johnston, chair of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition of B.C., have grown increasingly concerned health authorities’ overly enthusiastic embrace of the practice to the detriment of proper care.

“Altruism for some Fraser Health bureaucrats takes the form of putting medically hastened death squarely in front of everyone whose life looks low quality to euthanasia-minded staff,” Johnston said in an interview.

“Suicide prevention is not on their radar. In my opinion, the chain of command Is intolerant of any impediment to access far more than it cares about cutting a life short. This has become a juggernaut.”

Referring to the Rohoway case, Dr. Johnston concludes, “Families just get in the way, as can be seen by the threats thrown at these loving people by that social worker.”

How Fraser Health developed its MAiD-affirmative stance

As revealed in highly censored documents obtained earlier this year by The B.C. Catholic through a freedom-of-information application, Fraser Health’s official policy on medical assistance in dying (MAiD) is that it is supposed to be an “entirely patient-driven” process.

Yet the evidence, such as that of the case of Joan Rohoway, suggests doctors can and do lead euthanasia-related discussions.

To get to the bottom of the issue, The B.C. Catholic filed an appeal last spring with the provincial government’s Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner asking for previously withheld agendas, reports, and minutes of any meeting of Fraser Health’s board of directors in which development and implementation of MAiD policies and practices were discussed and/or voted on.

Christina Sefcik, a case-review officer with with the office, said in an April 22 letter to The B.C. Catholic the office opened a file on the case on March 30. She added, “Due to case volumes, it may be several months before this file is assigned to an investigator.”

In the meantime, she revealed that OPIC had requested that the health authority “produce a complete, unsevered copy of the records in dispute.”

The B.C. Catholic is awaiting further developments.