Self Assisted Dying
You may not like the thought of Assisted Dying and you may be against it, but first I invite you to hear my story.
Self Assisted Suicide - Life Termination - is restricted to those who are TERMINALLY ILL. If depressed - GET THERAPY. It needs serious guidelines and restrictions in place so it cannot / will not be abused. It MUST include doctors and maybe your vicar / family / guardian / and make sure there is nothing irregular with those who stand to benefit. AS:-
What gives you the right to dictate to me if and when I want to die ?
What gives you the right to deny me my own decision making process and the willingness to end my life because of a terminal and painful disease where there is doubtfully going to be a miracle cure RIGHT ON TIME and where I am expected to die slowly and miserably while my family and friends watch me withering away.
The medical profession is about DOING NO HARM and while filling dying people with expensive drugs in their desperate attempt to keep them alive for another day, another week or even another month - WHAT IS THE POINT IN DELAYING THE INEVITABLE AND DENYING ME THE RIGHT TO DIE - PEACEFULLY - BY MY OWN HANDS AND WHEN I WANT MY PAIN, MY ANGUISH AND THAT OF MY LOVED ONES, TO SIMPLY END - and how dare you think you have the right to dictate what I can and cannot do with MY life - MY body - NOT YOURS.
It's going to happen, so where is the harm in me being allowed to take responsibility and end it all.
And before you argue, like they always do, that ' You want to kill off all the old folk' is rubbish. And those people claiming it, know they talk rubbish. All you do by screaming in opposition, is showing us all your fear of death so cannot accept someone else who is okay with it and not afraid. Many will deny out of their own personal fears.
When any of my dogs or cats are old and ill and it is cruel to manintain their lives , then we take them to the vet and mercifully, have them put to sleep. It upsets, but is the kindest thing we can do.
If you are TERMINALLY ILL AND THERE IS NO HOPE - like my Mother when she was rotting in a bed with Dementia, pissing and shitting into a daiper, bed bound, no idea who I was or where she was and - sorry - but had I told her years prior this is how she would end up, she would have TOLD ME - not even asked me - she would have TOLD ME - to
'Put a pillow over my head while I am asleep darling, I don't want to end up like that .'
and as she lived life under her own control and will, she would have hated having that control taken away from her and having some strange foreign nurse wipe her butt and mopping up after her - for she had been a lady of great style and would have hated this, had she been aware, and that, my friends, is cruel and inhumane.
When Jack ( 63 ) was slowly dying, painfully, week by week a where a dramatic deterioration was visible almost day by day , he voiced he did not intend dribbling away his final days in pain and stuck in some miserable hospice some where and while he could, he fully intended ending his own life at home where he was happy.
He was living in Massachusetts where his family, most of who were doctors and nurses, and who were driving him up the wall with their over powering care and attention that was - as he called it - selfish and so fake - as he felt it was more about them than him. They were being ' so nice' and it was all ' so fake' and he knew it.
So he sold up and moved to Sarasota in Florida - better known as Gods Waiting Room and he bought a house in a gated community that was specifically for older people and Sarasota is famous for how easy it is to get home care from doctors etc. He was alone with his cat and being driven up the wall by chatty female nurses from 8am - 8pm and he just wanted peace.
That's where I came in.
When I found out just how ill he was, and where he told me on the phone - I was on a plane for Florida within 48 hours to check on him - and over tea one afternoon he declared how he intended not putting up with this and when he felt the time was right, he would take his own life, and I immediately offered to be there with him at the end , if and when he wanted some company, and as we had been friends in London before he returned state side, I felt it the right thing to offer. The decent thing to do.
In a very emotional response, with tears - he absoutely couldn't believe my offer and accepted instantly - and when he told his doctor and when I met his doctor, even he stated it was the kindest and most sincere thing he had ever heard of and was the sign of a real friend - and he was very willing, very discretely, to supply the drugs and gave instructions...
Jack had HIV and was seriously covered is KS and had had several mini strokes - leaving him disabled - and had 3 bouts of PCP pneumonia and the weekly chemo for the KS was - in actual fact - killing him - and he knew it. He was dying of HIV infections but it was the chemo that - actually - killed him and he knew it.
Pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP)—also known as Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia (PJP)—is a serious, airborne fungal lung infection that primarily affects people with weakened immune systems. When HIV was first known about - it was PCP Pneumonia that killed thousands of people quite quickly and was the main cause of early death until the discovery of AZT and other medications that halted the threat.
Kaposi sarcoma is a rare type of cancer.
It develops in the cells that line blood vessels and lymph vessels, causing abnormal growths or lesions to form on the skin, in the mucous membranes of the mouth, nose, and throat, or in internal organs such as the lungs and digestive tract. It can also cover any part of your exterior body.
I gave up work for 5 months, sorted my London house and business with friends looking after - and I spent 5 months looking after him, having replaced the chatty female nurses with a local and wonderful older ( 50's) gay male nurse WHO WAS WONDERFUL and between us, we looked after him - in his home - with his cat - and where I would spend hours every day talking about him, his life, his travels, his relationships and all about him. He didn't give a rats ass about some womens kids, or the price of petrol or fuck all, what he wanted was - maybe selfish - but he wanted to be heard and remembered as not just the old dying patient, but a human being who had lived and experieced and loved and who, at the end of his life, wanted the prostitute he originally met in London - to look after him in his final days and not family, not friends, not the professionals but the one person who did genuinely care and worry and love him, and who went out of his way to be there for him through the last few months of his life, and when the final end did come, it was peacful and as he had wanted.
No fuss.
The very person society generally looks down on, the sex worker, was the only person he wanted at his bedside. The prostitute that gave more, asked for nothing in return, and who gave the best he coud to a man who was alone in the world and who had a shared bond of genuine friendship, and he died smiling.
I tear up just remembering and writing this and while is was many decades ago, I still speak with him weekly when I look at the various pieces around Hamilton Hall he left me.
The ONLY thing you ever truly own in this world - The only thing you have ANY power over - IS YOUR LIFE - ( although in some cultures even that is taken away from you. ) Many will make demands - many will manipulate and try and control, maybe through coersion, bullying and threats, but ONLY YOU have control over what / where and when. Others can take a great deal of your control and power away from you and if and when they do, it is often for selifish reasons and not for the betterment of you and your lifes journey and not good for your soul.
ere and when you decide to do - ANYTHING - and only you can choose if and whe you want o die if terminally ill.
Bodily autonomy
is the fundamental right to make decisions about your own body, health, and life without coercion or violence.
What Bodily Autonomy Means
Self-Ownership: You have the right to control what happens to your physical body.
Health and Medical Choices: You have the right to accept or refuse medical treatments, procedures, and contraception.
Reproductive Rights: You have the right to decide if, when, and how to have children.
Freedom from Violence: You have the right to live free from sexual assault, forced marriage, domestic abuse, and non-consensual physical harm
I am pleased to see a slow crawl towards acceptance and while a vast majority of people support it in theory, it needs a lot more open discussion where people allay their own personal fears and stop thinking so selfishly and consider what it is like for the patient who is ill, the family member like my Mother - rotting slowly and just waiting to die as there is absolutely no quality of life and no reason to keep breathing other than to keep a caring profession in business.
John Bellamy
John Bellamy Adds:- IF AT ANY TIME YOU ARE FEELING REALLY DOWN - FOR WHATEVER REASON, YOU ARE ALWAYS WELCOME AT HAMILTON HALL *** AS MY GUEST *** for a few days to relax and chill out and talk and we will listen as sometimes, that's all that is needed. Someone to hear you. There are no magic answers or cures. There is only compassion and care and a sincerity rarely - and sadly - not common in the gay community.
I run Hamilton Hall as a venue with a soul and as a Not For Profit Venue - We care and we take the time as it's all too easy to fall between the cracks and vanish and no one notices and we are here to make sure you are seen and heard - and remembered.
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