My name is Sylvia. I am 59 years old.
I joined DWDACT Inc. because I believe deeply in the right of every person to make choices about their end of life and in voluntary euthanasia. I have been a member for about 7 or 8 years. I was spurred on to join when my mother became ill and started suffering. She had always been a glass half full type of person, through many personal and health challenges. She was also a very dignified person. She had always believed in voluntary euthanasia and we had discussed this but she still got much enjoyment out of life. Then she got increasingly ill, lost her dignity and her will to live and was suffering profoundly. She deeply wished to be able to die and kept asking everyone if they would help her. I was shattered to see this gentle, loving, courageous woman so devastated by her illness and inability to have a dignified end, the only thing she wanted. The end of her life was full of indignity and deep physical and emotional pain. It still makes me cry to think of it.
I want a change in the law so other people do not have to suffer what my mother did and so I myself will have choice in the future.
I would like to see it made legal that doctors assist patients in dying well if they wish it and within guidelines to prevent abuse.