In celebration of my Mum's life and her infinite courage, I'm taking on two challenges this year to raise money for the Campaign for Dignity in Dying.

The first is to complete 'The Fan Dance', a 15 mile load bearing march across the highest peak in the Brecon Beacons, South Wales. Carrying 16kg plus food and water my target finish time is 4 hours. This will be taking place on the 26th of March 2023.

The second challenge, on a date to be confirmed is the 'David Goggins, 4x4x48' which is a 4 mile run, every 4 hours for 48 hours and will be taking place in the New Forest this summer.

My Mum had an assisted death at Dignitas - she was forced to travel alone

In 2019 my Mum Susie, a nurse for 40 years, had an assisted death at Dignitas in Switzerland. She was terminally ill with Vasculitis Disease which caused her Kidney failure and went on to attack her other organs.

She spent the remainder of her life savings, and in agonising pain, she travelled alone to protect her family from the risk of criminal investigation, so that she could have a dignified end to her life. She wanted the right to have control over the manner and timing of her clinically certain demise, but the law in the UK denied her that right. It also denied me the final few days with my mum at the end of her life.

A cruel law and the cost of inaction

The law in this country meant my Mum had to leave her family behind and fly to another country on her own, spending over £15,000 to do so. She had to make these arrangements, organise her own travel and paperwork, whilst terminally ill with an evil disease. I am so proud of the immense strength she showed in her final days, but I now have to live with the regret of not being able to be with her or to be able to spend her final days by her side.

The lack of an assisted dying law in this country is forcing people like my Mum to end their lives prematurely. If my Mum didn’t have to undertake all of that effort in her last few months, just to have what ought to be her human right, a dignified death, then she would likely have been around a few months longer. She wouldn’t have had the worry and the horror of researching suicide methods and she would have had her family by her side.

Furthermore, there is a cost to inaction. It would be wrong to assume that inaction has no price, because it is costing people like me and families like mine, every day. The cost is dying people being denied their choice of dignity. It is the cost of dying people choosing to research or even attempt suicide, resulting in the cost of PTSD in our emergency workers having to find them. It is costing people thousands of pounds, often their life savings, and the worry of travelling without the support of their loved ones.

It is wrong to think that by not making any changes to the law, you are not making things any worse. It is easy to assume that doing nothing about this topic is the same as an impartial strategy. But we are already in a little hell with the way things are and we are just extending the problem by not taking action.

Making the assumption that hospice and palliative care are a suitable alternative for everyone, simply because pain can be managed with medicine, totally ignores the undignified side effects of these high doses of medication and the psychological and emotional impact someone experiences when they are incapacitated and unable to care for themselves.

If someone chooses palliative and hospice care for the end of their life, and chooses for ventilators to be removed, this is all legal and acceptable in the UK. But a terminally ill person, deemed mentally competent and of their own free will, does not have that choice available to them. The result of this lack of choice, is what happened to MP Paul Bloomfield’s father, and so many others that I have known of in my policing career.

Dying people are not the same as suicidal people. In my previous job I regularly dealt with suicidal people. A suicidal person is someone who cannot see a way out of the emotional or physical pain they are in other than through suicide. This is objectively a premature end to their life because they are not terminally ill.

Dying people are distinctly different in that they are objectively going to die. They want to shorten an imminent and inevitable dying process rather than shorten their life through suicide. It is my view that we should not be discussing Assisting Suicide, and only focus on assisted dying.

In celebration of my Mum’s life and infinite courage, I'm raising money for the Dignity in Dying Campaign. You can support them by donating on this page, or by visiting their website to become a member via this link: Dignity in Dying - Sign Up