When corporate high-flyer Peter Short became terminally ill, he focused not only on living a better life, but campaigning for greater choice at the end of it.
When he learned on his 57th birthday that he had terminal cancer, Peter Short decided to do a lot of living in the time he had left. After quitting his job – he was a highly-paid business executive – he snorkelled on the Great Barrier Reef, gambled in glitzy casinos, basked beside pools in tropical resorts, ate delectable meals in fiendishly expensive restaurants and drank some excellent red wine. He had to be home in Melbourne once a month for palliative chemotherapy – he was determined to keep the cancer at bay for as long as possible – but he took so many holidays with his wife, Elizabeth, and their son, Mitchell, that some of his close acquaintances lost track of him.