Assisted dying: Isn’t it time we centred those who want and need it?

Stephen Price

My dad died at the Grange Hospital back in mid April.

Four long years into his descent into the dark, painful journey of pulmonary fibrosis on top of COPD that ended with an ambulance call we’d all been hoping not to make that night.

Just a little longer.

His partner, a former nurse, and I shared his care in the end. I’d sleep at his flat on a broken air bed, ear plugs doing nothing to counter the heavy-duty groans and kicks of the oxygen machine at my feet, as he tried in vain to sleep, coughing up phlegm, afraid to suffocate.

In his last few months, getting from chair to bed was impossible, as was making his own food or a cup of tea, walking, getting to the shower or toilet unaided or simply enjoying food, instead having to drink fortisip as his strong, rugby-honed body became lifeless skin and bone.

For me, and all of us around him, caring for him was an honour I’d repeat again and again, just as he’d cared for my mum who died a similarly cruel death from lung cancer.

I wish, in some selfish way, I still had that to do, as I navigate the loss of both parents, and a world that feels unfamiliar and exposed.

His last week was particularly cruel, as he fought to simply breathe, throwing up every mouthful he tried to eat, unable to think through the excruciating pain even oral morphine couldn’t hide.

What he said

Back in December I told his sister this would be his last Christmas, and she made a point to call in as I sat in the same room before leaving them to reminisce.

For the duration of her visit, he had his game face on, the one those outside of his small circle knew – smiling, upbeat, cheery. And I was left with a feeling of ‘she won’t believe this is it’ as I’d had with other guests before.

Only a few of us saw the truth.

The indignity.

The sadness.

The fear.

The relentless hours in the same four walls lined with photos of his loved ones, his view of Ysgyryd Fawr, the television churning out the same old rot that we couldn’t hear over the coughing, the vomiting, the kicks and beeps and rumbling of his oxygen machine.

Typically, for a man of his generation, he was at all times stoic. But now and then he’d tell us he couldn’t take any more, that nothing was touching the pain, that he was in such agony that he had had enough.

He had taken all he could take.

We often use the phrase, however flippant, that ‘we wouldn’t allow a dog to suffer this way’. It’s always a dog. And we wouldn’t.

Just as I held both my parents hands as they slipped away, blessed that I could be there to thank them, to let them know that they weren’t alone, I’d been there for my dogs too.

I lay on the floor with one, and cradled him as he passed, and it was the right thing. We wouldn’t let him suffer.

We let my dad though, we had no other choice.

He had no other choice.

The field

It took me maybe six years to write about my mum dying, and I was abstract, I don’t like to share my pain or sadness publicly. I don’t like, or ever wish to be a victim.

But I feel my duty to share his pain, and to add his thoughts and mine, to a debate that so often doesn’t centre those that are so strangely left out – those who are in the midst of their suffering and those left behind.

In all the assisted dying conversations that make the news, and believe me, I read a lot of it, it’s always the groups of people that don’t want it, that feel others can’t have it so no one else should, that are shouting the loudest.

From disability campaigners to those of faith, and those that have fears for the vulnerable who might feel a burden. Valid fears.

The stifled voices of those who can speak for themselves must be heard, just as I would want my voice heard if I’m ever faced with an illness like those of my parents.

Please let there be safeguard after safeguard, protection on top of protection, and far be it for me to even suggest what those might be, but it wouldn’t take a genius, it would simply take compassion.

But for my dad, my brilliant, vital, generous, loving protector of a dad. My biggest champion and bestest friend, he didn’t deserve to suffer the way he did.

In 2025, neither should anyone else.