Posted on 03/12/2022 8:50:39 AM PST by jerod
Patients have a right to privacy on this matter, says Ontario’s chief coroner
The family of a woman who chose to have a medically assisted death without telling any of them says they desperately wish they'd had a chance to say goodbye.
"We all feel like something was ripped away from us, and we want that goodbye. We want that closure," said Cynthia Hiebert, whose sister, Cheryl Hiebert, 62, had medical assistance in dying (MAID) March 3, 2021.
Cheryl had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease seven years earlier.
In an interview with White Coat, Black Art host Dr. Brian Goldman at her home in Waterloo, Ont., Cynthia's voice wavered as she recalled how she found out about Cheryl's death.
"I was teaching piano on Zoom and the phone rang," she said.
"My husband took the phone, talked to my dad and came into the room and said, 'You have to mute.' And so I muted, and he told me that Cheryl had died, which at that moment, and really even now, just seemed unfathomable."
Her father, Victor Hiebert, had just received a call from a friend of Cheryl's informing him that his daughter had died, but nothing else about the circumstances or even the exact date.
Victor, Cynthia and her brother, Philip Hiebert, say they wish the rules around medical assistance in dying gave more consideration to family members who wish to say goodbye. But as both Ontario's chief coroner and a lawyer who specializes in legal issues pertaining to health care explain, the updates to Canada's criminal code that allow for eligible Canadians to pursue MAID stipulate that the patient's right to privacy comes first.
Federal legislation that allows eligible Canadian adults to request medical assistance in dying first came into effect in June 2016. It was updated on March 17, 2021, to adapt and clarify some aspects of eligibility.
Dr. Dirk Huyer, the chief coroner of Ontario, could not speak to the specifics of Cheryl Hiebert's case. But he said it's not the first time that a family has been left out of a person's decision to have MAID.
Dr. Dirk Huyer, chief coroner for Ontario, says it's not the first time that a family has been left out of a person's decision to have medical assistance in dying. (Sue Goodspeed/CBC) "I don't know the percentage or the frequency of it, but it certainly does occur that the patient who has chosen MAID has made a decision to not notify their families," he said in an interview with White Coat, Black Art.
"And we have had situations where we have been made aware that the person has told nobody, and in fact, the clinician has said that the person requested that nobody be notified after the death as well."
The coroner's office conducts a standard review of every medically assisted death in Ontario, and last year alone, there were more than 3,000 such cases.
Cheryl's family said that she was a teacher who spent much of her life in Waterloo, the small southern Ontario city where she and her siblings were raised.
When she died, Cheryl was just shy of her 63rd birthday. At age 55, Cheryl was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. But she kept that diagnosis from her family for the first five years, said Cynthia.
At the time, the family was dealing with another case of Alzheimer's disease. Alyce Hiebert — the siblings' mother and Victor's wife — had been diagnosed in 2007 at age 77. Alyce died in 2019 after spending four years in long-term care.
Cynthia says Cheryl's disease was nowhere near as advanced as their mother's had been during her final years.
"Her long-term memory was fabulous," she said.
"We were going for walks [in] summer [2020] and she was telling me stuff that I was too young to remember about our childhood, about our parents. And so, you know, she was just soaring above the perceptions we have of the limitations of Alzheimer's."
...With no details about cause of death, the family spent the first few days after learning Cheryl was gone trying to find out what happened.
"My dad was actively trying to demand an autopsy … because we weren't being told how she died," said Philip, a criminal lawyer who lives in Toronto.
Cynthia said she had no luck with the funeral home, either.
"I asked the funeral director, 'How did she die?'" said Cynthia.
"[He said,] 'Oh, I can't tell you.' You cannot tell a loved one, a family member, how their loved one died?"
These questions prompted Philip to contact the coroner's office.
In Ontario, the Office of the Chief Coroner reviews all MAID deaths, Cheryl Hiebert's included. But in this case, they went further and conducted an investigation. The Coroner's Investigation Statement into Cheryl's death says concerns were raised by Cheryl's family that she may have been coerced into MAID. Those concerns led the coroner's office to collaborate with Waterloo Regional Police Service on an investigation in which they contacted Cheryl's siblings and dad, health-care workers, the MAID doctors, her friends, her previous employer and others.
The investigation did not raise concerns of coercion or influence. It concluded that proper procedures for MAID were followed, and Cheryl was deemed competent to make informed health care-related decisions, including to have MAID.
Asked if they thought their sister had the executive function to understand what she was getting into, both Cynthia and Philip said they believe she did.
"When I last talked to her, I would say that she would have," said Cynthia.
Philip said that, based on their last conversation in November, "a good and fairly lengthy phone call … I found she was very lucid."
Looking back, though the family had no indication Cheryl was serious about MAID, Cynthia recalls Cheryl mentioning it once about two years ago in the context of a conversation about Cheryl's smoking. Cynthia had been expressing concern that her sister's status as a smoker could make it hard to get a place in an assisted living setting, should the need arise.
"And she said, 'Oh, well, have you ever heard of MAID?'"
Cynthia told her sister she didn't believe she qualified.
Their brother, Philip, said that despite his reticence about MAID, he would have tried to support Cheryl's decision, had he known, but also asked some questions.
"I think I would have told her, look, if you're not at the point where you have to go into assisted living now, why do it now? You have some good years ahead of you yet; why not enjoy them?"
Cynthia says she was an advocate for MAID before losing her sister this way, and had written letters for the registered charity Dying with Dignity in the past.
Reflecting on his daughter's decision to have MAID, Victor said, "Maybe she thought that we would disapprove and dissuade her from doing that. But that isn't actually the case.
"But had we known, we probably would have dissuaded her of doing it that soon because she seemed in quite good health."
And that is why she did not tell anyone.
How do you know the state just didn’t murder her and said that was her wish?
If one of my relatives offed herself in this manner with the complicity of the state and/or a doctor, I wouldn’t shed a tear. I wouldn’t even show up at the funeral or whatever “memorial service” nonsense they had for her.
This presents an interesting question. What if you were diagnosed with some sort of early-onset dementia, say at age 50 or 60, with a 99% chance of complete mental incapacity within a decade while remaining otherwise physically fit. Would you want to live those last decades of your life completely dependent on others, with your mind gone, or would you choose ahead of time to end your life once you reached a particular stage of decline?
Medically assisted suicide is still suicide. Plain and simple. And it is still a mean, cruel and hateful thing to do to one’s loved ones.
“Medical assistance in dying” doesn’t seem so far-fetched now, after the massive medical assistance in dying that we experienced beginning in March 2020. Jabs that brought disease. Elderly thrown into nursing homes to die. Millions forced to inhale their CO2. Effective drugs banned. Ineffective drugs promoted. Millions thrown out of work. Millions isolated.
State assisted suicide. Talk about a slippery slope. Soon the state will decide it’s in your best interest (really theirs) to make the decision to “assist” you in your suicide.
If you want to destroy yourself that is your call. The state shouldn’t be involved at all.
Give it up. It must suck to think that everything that you think is unacceptable in life is the government’s fault.
MAID=MURDER
Awwww - do you need to be such a slave to government that you endorse state run execution when you no are no longer deemed useful to society?
There’s a broader issue being missed in both the article and many of the comments, IMO. Simply put, nobody is guaranteed a tomorrow so people need to learn to appreciate each and every moment with their loved ones and friends. It should not require a special moment to “say goodbye” because you’re already being frank with them in every encounter.
Old saying: “Man plans and God laughs.” Make every moment count without adding the burden of saving something needing to be said for “next time.”
Because the State is always benign, just ask them.
This has been happening in the U.S. for many years under the guise of “hospice.”
The mean, hateful and cruel option is to saddle our loved ones with caregiving/warehousing a person with dementia through those horrific final years before natural death brings blessed relief. Not a single one of those distant family members can possibly know what daily suffering this woman faced. They weren’t there giving her care. They witnessed the long-slow death of wife & mother and when they couldn’t deal with the first-hand horrors of a dying brain, they put her in a dementia warehouse facility for 4 long years. Seriously? Why should they think that their daughter/sister should look at that and desire to follow in her mother’s footsteps? Keep in mind that this person HAD to make the decision to end her life BEFORE she was deemed mentally incompetent to make her own decision. Once that happens, she’s doomed to simply exist (and suffer). I pray none of you has to live this misery to understand why she chose to end her life.
Who wants money?
For a lot of people that is not a choice. Even if you know you will end up a drooling, incoherent mess, and a burden to your loved ones it is not permissible to kill your self or allow someone else to do so.
That is what I was thinking too...
My mother-in-law has early onset Alzheimer’s. If you have it, you are not competent to make that decision.
This was state sanction cold blooded murder.
Unless I die of a heart attack or during my sleep, I have zero interest in going through the throes of death from cancer or another debilitating disease. I’ve already told my kids I’m opting for EXIT (Switzerland) when the times comes.
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