Medically assisting the grim reaper to lay hands on a member of our family

On Saturday (December 9), our bright and bubbly little dog, Saaya, passed into the great kennel in the sky.

It was a medically assisted death, as the term goes. We had to complete and sign the “euthanasia” form. “Crying like a fire in the sun”, to use Bob Dylan’s memorable phrase, we stood with the “gun” from the song — the pen — pointed at Saaya’s life. It was a little life of a little being who weighed 8.5 kg.

After six happy years, life had become unliveable for Saaya because of a second bout of paralysis in 14 months. She had Intervertebral Disc Disease, something very common for the dachshund breed, and it had recurred. The first time round, she retained bladder and bowel function and after an operation on her spinal cord and an eight-week confined existence, made an 85 per cent recovery.

For the past 14 months, Saaya had a reasonable quality of life with some help from us (not least, carrying her up to bed every night and down again in the morning). She was able to run around, rush at the pigeons in the back garden, play with her knobbly yellow ball, bark at the shed and beg for that ultimate treat — a slice of apple. She could scamper to the freezer urging us to hand out a frozen bone-sicle. She would lie by the fire. She would bark at the mailman while wagging her tail at him. She could scamper to the freezer urging us to hand out a frozen bone-sicle. She would lie by the fire. She would bark at the mailman while wagging her tail at him. She would greet guests with a great display of enthusiasm — always. She remained unfailingly gentle towards children, lowering her head to let them stroke her, in a subtly empathetic desire to connect and ensure they weren’t frightened.

This time, Saaya had lost all sense of the back end of her body and after consulting with the vet we judged it kindest to let her go.

So we did.

From start to finish, our much-loved little dog’s medically assisted death took about an hour. It struck me with force, the ease with which a little life can be extinguished. But only because Saaya was non-human, right? Even though she was a member of our family, it was relatively easy to medically assist the grim reaper to lay hands on her.

Turns out, the argument for more and easier medically assisted deaths is heading that way for humans too. In Canada, there’s been a massive expansion of the criteria for medically assisted death.

It comes into force in March 2024 and will allow Canadians whose sole underlying condition is mental illness, to choose medically assisted death. Having legalised assisted death in 2016 for people with terminal illness and expanded it in 2021 to people with incurable, but not terminal, conditions, the new mental health provision will make Canada one of the most expansive countries in the world when it comes to medical assistance in dying (MAID), according to an expert panel report to Canada’s parliament.

My recent experience of relatively easy medically assisted death for a non-human raised questions about whether or not it should be a model for our own species.

Especially as this is becoming an increasingly urgent debate in the Western world. Within weeks, British MPs are expected to publish their recommendations to the government on assisted dying.

And within hours after our own brush with non-human euthanasia, the daughter of British actor Diana Rigg released her mother’s impassioned statement in favour of legally assisted dying. It was recorded shortly before her “truly awful” and “dehumanising” death from cancer three years ago. Rigg called for a law that gives “human beings true agency over their own bodies at the end of life”.

The issue is rightly difficult and very divisive.

Originally published at https://www.rashmee.com