‘Give people the choice. It’s their life’

“My mother never had the option; she was made a prisoner in her own body.”

A Cork man has described the agony of seeing his mother die of multiple sclerosis (MS) as the Government considers recommendations that assisted dying and euthanasia be introduced in Ireland.

Speaking to the Cork Independent, Alan O’Brien (not his real name) said he wholeheartedly supports any new legislation that allows people to end their lives with dignity and on their own terms.

“Speaking as someone who watched his mother slowly die over the course of ten gruelling years, the experience consumes everything,” said Mr O’Brien.

He added: “I know it pained her to be perceived as a burden, I could see in her twilight years how empty she became. Everything was taken from her – independence, freedom, mobility, and speech. All that was left was a hospital bed in a room without any quality of life.”

Mr O’Brien, whose mother was diagnosed when he was still a child, said it is hard to know what his family would have done had the option of assisted dying or euthanasia been available.

He continued: “It took years for her to finally find peace. If she was given a choice, maybe she could’ve taken some agency during that nightmare. I don’t what to speak for anyone else but all I call for is giving people the choice. It’s their life.”

Mr O’Brien’s mother passed away in 2017 and he says her battle with MS had a devastating impact on the whole family.

“My mother’s illness was a consent presence in my young life, almost like this looming shadow over my entire childhood. Most kids measure their life with milestones, birthdays, holidays, school events. But throughout my life each year was marked by the deterioration of my mother as the disease had a tighter and tighter grip over my family,” said Mr O’Brien.

“Over the course of those last years I got many calls saying that she wasn’t expected to make it. I constantly lived with fear and worry that she might pass at any moment. While also living with the self-loathing and guilt that, in a small part, I wished it would all just end.

“It’s best described as an alienating quagmire of misery and torture, which I’m still struggling to process to this day. Those last years ripped everything away from my relationship with my mother, my own self-perception, even her smile. It was simply a nightmare,” he added.

Recommendation on assisted dying and euthanasia

Yesterday, Wednesday, The Oireachtas Committee on Assisted Dying brought a final report before the cabinet recommending that both assisted suicide and euthanasia be introduced in Ireland.

The report recommends that a person diagnosed with an incurable medical condition which will cause death within six months (12 months for neurodegenerative conditions like MS) will be given the option to choose to end their life.

The recommendations state that the illness must be causing suffering that cannot be relieved in a way that the person in question finds tolerable.

Assisted dying involves a person taking action to end their life while euthanasia involves a doctor taking the action to end the life when the patient is physically unable to do it themselves.

The act of suicide was decriminalised in Ireland in 1993, however the act of assisting someone in taking their own life remains illegal.

*Name has been changed to protect man’s privacy.