April 19, 2016
Cannabis kept my wife going, Irish assisted dying campaigner tells Nelson group
Cannabis provided by the local policeman helped to prolong his wife’s life, Irish assisted dying campaigner Tom Curran has told a Nelson audience.
Curran’s wife Marie Fleming died in 2013 after a failed court bid to permit an assisted death.
Before and since, he has continued to campaign for people’s right to choose. He is European coordinator of voluntary euthanasia group Exit International, and has represented the right to die movement in many countries.
He spoke to 80 people in Nelson’s Fairfield House at a meeting organised by Nelson Options, the local chapter of Exit International.
Nelson has an active Exit following and Wellington was the only other place where Curran gave a public talk during his visit.
Fleming was already a multiple sclerosis sufferer when the couple met 27 years ago and as the illness progressed, both had to give up their jobs so she could stay at home.
He had been an engineering consultant, she was a university lecturer.
“I had been charging more per day than what I was now getting for a month,” Curran said.
Fleming decided that she wanted to control her own death and so their fight to allow her to be helped to do so began.
“It was something for the future – but one of the things that struck me at the time was that probably one of the hardest things that anybody could be asked to do was to help someone they loved to die.”
It brought up moral issues and exposed the selfishness of wanting to keep a loved one alive when that person wanted to die.
“We want that person to be with us all the time. You have to decide to be completely selfless. To me it’s a real, true test of love – if you are prepared to lose that person, for what they want.”
Curran said the two things that kept Fleming alive for her last 10 years were cannabis, and the choice to end her own life.
Cannabis was the only “medicine” that helped her pain, and relieved the uncontrollable and agonising muscle spasms that MS sufferers endure.
“Part of the irony of the whole thing was that when we found that it worked, one of our suppliers was the local policeman.
“He supplied it on the basis that if he had confiscated it from someone who wouldn’t be charged then it wasn’t evidence and would have been destroyed, so he passed it on to us.”
After researching the drug they decided to grow their own.
“I bought seeds on the Internet and we grew cannabis for the best part of eight years, up ’til the time Marie died.”
It “changed our lives completely”, Curran said.
Since she died he had continued as a grower and supplied cannabis to other sufferers.
“I make no secret of it but nothing has happened, and I think I’m probably living in the legacy that Marie left.”
He was a strong supporter for having medical cannabis legalised, he said, and this was likely to happen in Ireland soon.
His wife’s illness reached the point where she began to lose the ability to swallow and she booked to travel to Switzerland for a medically-assisted death.
“I didn’t want Marie to die, and she didn’t want to die. So I put it to her that if I could arrange that she could die at home anytime she wanted, would she change her mind? She jumped at the chance.”
That’s when his involvement with Exit began and they were able to put a plan for her death in place, Curran said.
Once that was done, “she just relaxed”.
“The stress about the possibility of a painful and prolonged death was gone.”
He said they continued to have a wonderful life together but after five more years, when Fleming only retained control of her eyes and mouth, she decided it was time to die.
“She chose the day of the 20th of December two years ago, just before Christmas. She died very peacefully in my arms.”
Curran said that extra five years came from breaking the law and having a plan for her death.
“If that had been available from the State, then we wouldn’t have had to worry, and Marie wouldn’t have had the anguish leading up to the point where we put that plan in place.”
This was why he continued to promote a law change through the right to die movement, and also why he continued to work for Exit, helping people with the option of ending their lives.
“There are more Maries out there that need help … there will always be other Maries.”
He said Ireland’s Supreme Court concluded that the current law discriminated against people like Fleming who could not take their own lives without assistance, but was not prepared to overturn it.
It felt that if it struck out the law, vulnerable people would be open to abuse.
However the court ruled that there was no constitutional impairment on the government changing the law if safeguards were put in place. He had worked with a legal team to draft a bill and that would be read in the Irish parliament later this year, Curran said.
He said in most places where the right to die movement was growing, it was physician-assisted dying being put forward.
“I see no reason why somebody like myself can’t be give the right to help someone. I’m not a medical professional, but I was as good as anybody else at helping Marie to die. In fact she was far more comfortable when it was me that helped her, rather than some doctor.”
The medical profession wanted to retain control, he said, but that took the decision away.
“I would much prefer to see the last decision being with the person who is dying.”
Even so, Irish doctors and priests were involved in Exit, he said.
“I’ve put plans in place for probably over 200 people. A lot of them are both medical people, and people in organised religion. In fact Marie was a very strong Catholic.”
Public opinion in Ireland had swung behind assisted dying, with 85 per cent approval in the most recent large poll, and 53 per cent of people in “holy Catholic Ireland” said they would assist a loved one to die.
With those results coming through, “there has to be something wrong with the law”, Curran said.
Nelson assisted dying advocate Don Grant, whose wife Yoka de Houwer died of a rare form of cancer three years ago, also addressed the group.
Grant, a former president of the New Zealand Voluntary Euthanasia Society, focused on advance directives, formerly called living wills.
These were legal documents telling medical professionals how a person wanted to be treated when he or she could no longer communicate.
They were a good idea for the elderly but also for younger people who might be affected by an accident or an illness.
“Appoint an agent – a person you can trust and who will stand up for you, and make sure the medical staff will carry out your wishes,” Grant said.
“Euthanasia is not yet legal. This will help you if you do want to have a choice and die in a reasonably nice way.
“Once Yoka had an advance directive, she was pretty happy.”