00:00In 2010, I was diagnosed with myeloma, or multiple myeloma as most people know it,
00:07and it's an incurable cancer. It tends, from what I understand, not to kill as such, it's just that
00:14it affects your other organs so badly, whether it be a blood cancer or a bone cancer, that your other
00:20organs fail, and in my case it appears it's the kidneys that it's affecting most, and I understand
00:28dying through kidney failure can be an extremely painful death. I've had one stem cell transplant
00:36and that lasted a wonderful 10 years when I was free of the cancer, but as I say it's incurable
00:43and it came back, so I've had a second stem cell transplant, and with each transplant,
00:48that's lasted three years, my second one so far, with each transplant you get radiotherapy,
00:55chemotherapy and so on, but as I say eventually the second one will fail, and I understand that
01:02they don't give third ones, so all I will have then is just chemotherapy, and I understand that
01:12that's carried on until either I give up with it and say no I can't take any more, or I pass away,
01:18whichever is the first. So why do you support the assisted dying bill? Many years ago now,
01:25a relative of mine passed away in similar circumstances, and it was a horrible, horrible
01:31death to witness. They were squirming about on a bed in absolute pain for hour after hour,
01:40and the medical people were not able to help in terms of giving any more pain relief, because
01:48it would have killed the person, and they weren't allowed to do that. So it was a horrible, horrible
01:56situation. I wouldn't wish it on anyone, and it's certainly not something I want to go through
02:00myself. So if you like, I'm thinking of it as an insurance thing, that if my pain level gets
02:07to such a level that painkillers can't cope, can't calm it down anymore, then I'm not going
02:15to that area where the pain is so bad, painkillers can't help me anymore,
02:21and I'm suffering tremendously. What do you think to the objections to the bill?
02:29I can understand why people raise the objections that they are doing.
02:33I don't think they're valid because the safeguards in the bill are supposedly the best in the world,
02:39and it would require a change in the law for the bill to apply to people other than those it
02:44is going to apply to at the moment, i.e. those with less than six months to live.
02:49I think it's a matter of choice, and I can certainly understand people, as I do,
02:54wanting to choose that they would die a few months earlier possibly, rather than risk going through
03:01the absolute hell that I know can exist at the end, if you get to the stage where your pain
03:07can't be controlled by painkillers anymore.
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