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LIFE, MARRIAGE & FAMILY
I’m terminally ill and the debate on euthanasia scares me
By Julie Morgan
THE DOCTORS HAVE told me that I
have a few months to live; the cancer
that began in my breast four years
ago has now spread to my spine, ribs, hips
and, more significantly, to my lungs.
The surgeries, extensive chemotherapy,
and radiation that I went through back
then plus the ongoing hormone therapy
didn’t do the trick. And so now, in my mid-
50s, I’m terminally ill. It often doesn’t seem
real, yet it is. But there’s so much more that
I want to do – I am not ready to go!
My own story of facing an untimely
death has been interwoven with that of
my best friend and housemate who, within
these same four years, was diagnosed and
subsequently died of lung cancer. And no,
she wasn’t a smoker.
As my first illness was coming to an end,
her illness began and so I went from being
the person who was cared for to being the
one who was the primary carer. There was
a week’s difference. So the last four years
have given me a unique window into the
complexity of death and dying, of living and
loving, and of holding on and letting go.
The NSW community is about to debate
physician assisted death or voluntary
euthanasia. No doubt one of the key ideas
will be the notion that we ought to have a
‘free choice’ when it comes to the manner
of our death. This is coupled with the
different understandings that people have
about what it means to die with dignity.
These are vitally important conversations
to have. However, it often feels to me that
the voices who want physician assisted
dying are given extra amplification by
celebrities, and that, because they talk
about dying with dignity, they somehow
must be right.
But the last four years of experience have
confirmed for me everything that my two
ethics degrees have taught me: that human
dignity is so inherent that it is expressed
even in extreme vulnerability and not just
in the good times.
The debate worries and scares me on
several levels. Fortunately, we just don’t go
around killing each other anymore so the
notion that it’s a person’s ‘free choice’ to die
just doesn’t make sense. Recognising the
full scope of human dignity, we stopped
capital punishment a long time ago.
Now bringing in legislation that allows
a group of experts to determine who can
‘legally’ die, seems a retrograde move.
Intellectually, that worries me. And once the
I trust that my family and friends will abide with me. Photo: Creative Commons/Phil Guest.
legislation has been approved, experience
tells us that it is likely to grow exponentially.
I can imagine a time when particularly
frail and vulnerable people will succumb
to the thought that it might be best for
their families and for society in general for
them to let go and die – they will agree to
something because they think they ought to.
That scares me.
I have always been an extremely private
person and so the thought that my
increasingly frail body will need intimate
help does not thrill me. But just as I cared for
and loved my friend in all her messiness and
fragility, I will have to let others care for and
love me in the same way. There is nothing
undignified about that.
So my experience of being a primary carer
tells me that as I’m dying, the presence of
people who have the emotional capacity to
sit with me during long hours, who have the
strength to continually stroke my arm, to
bring me cups of water in the night, to tell
me that they love me and to stay with me
even if it seems that I am no longer present
to them is of beyond measure.
I’m sure that I will know their voices,
and that I will know their touch. So as the
doctors relieve my physical pain, I trust that
my family and friends will abide with me so
that just as I have lived, so will I die, with
integrity and grace.
Julie Morgan is a lecturer in ethical
leadership at Australian Catholic University.
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FEBRUARY 2017 CatholicOutlook 19