Doctor-assisted suicide ban to be appealed in B.C.

[moriah]

4. My father died in 2009 from HIV.

He received excellent hospice care and pain management. When the end finally came and the skyrocketing calcium levels from the tumor leaching calcium from his bones made him delirious, they sedated him with a benzo pump along with his morphine pump... and he was given the maximum possible dosages for his weight to both, as he'd told me the thing he feared most was dying in pain. He vocalized that fear, too, before it got to that point.

If nothing else, legislation needs to make sure compassionate end of life care is not denied to patients out of fear of breaking a law against assisted suicide. Some patients need massive doses of opiates to accomplish the things in life they want to accomplish before the end (quality of life is the focus) and by the time they're end-stage, they're already very tolerant. Also, some patients like my father cannot handle Haldol or other neuroleptics routinely given for agitation and delirium without significant uncomfortable extra-pyramidal side effects -- if a doctor is afraid to give an appropriate medication to reduce suffering because of worries that the combination could kill the patient, it could mean many people dying in pain unnecessarily who *aren't* seeking "assisted suicide".

Doctors should be able to present patients and their families with all the options and let them make the decision. It's their lives, and their death.