This Wednesday Javier will die in his bed. He has been waiting four months for that moment. He will be the first person in Madrid to be euthanized, a right recognized in the legislation since last June, which in the Community of Madrid has started several months late. The Guarantee and Evaluation Commission, necessary to analyze and decide on each case, was created just two weeks ago, on October 19. And that’s what this 58-year-old man who was diagnosed with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) last year has had to wait for. In a few months he has gone from walking with difficulty because he had leg problems to not being able to do it, to going in a wheelchair, hardly moving his hands or getting to sleep because of the pain.
This Tuesday, Cadena SER, which has advanced this information, spoke with him. That same morning, the neurologist from the Hospital 12 de Octubre who has accompanied him in the process called him to inform him that his case had been evaluated and approved by the committee. She asked him when he wanted it to happen and he said “tomorrow.” I did not want and could not take it anymore: “The pains are brutal, every day that goes by they get worse and I can’t even take them with morphine anymore.”
Javier, the man whose euthanasia was delayed, will finally die in peace: “I want to leave and I’m happy”
A few weeks ago he told us what it still costs to die with dignity in Spain despite all the advances
🎙 Inform @mariolalourido https://t.co/0LCcjIO2E7
– Today for Today (@HoyPorHoy) November 3, 2021
“I am convinced that I am going to die for dignity. It was what he was asking politicians. I’m going, really, happy, happy. I know that when I lie down in bed and close my eyes … I have 58 years to live, “he said. That will happen this Wednesday throughout the day at his home, according to a spokesman for the Madrid Ministry of Health, for which a medical team travels. That team, Javier explained in that interview in the SER, is made up of a “consulting doctor, the neurologist [la especialista del 12 de Octubre que lo ha acompañado en el proceso] and two nurses from Getafe ”. They, and their family, will accompany Javier in that time that he wishes to be the last.
To get here, it was not easy. In September he denounced, also in Cadena SER, that the Community was “lengthening” its “suffering”. “If this were happening to any of their relatives, it would already be working. They are lengthening my suffering. I have a lot of pain, I was counting on being dead two months ago, ”he said then.
The Executive of Isabel Díaz Ayuso has been one of the last to implement everything necessary to be able to apply the Euthanasia Law, in force since June 25. The last of the organizations that had to activate, the commission that allows the development of the norm in the autonomies and that is the one that has the last word to give the green light or reject the concession of this public service, began to be operational on 19 October.
Living will
In addition, until last week, Madrid asked whoever had requested euthanasia in their living will to ratify it. The wording on the community’s website stated that if that wish had been expressed before the publication of the current law, the advance living will document should be updated to once again record that request, something that represented an obstacle for whoever had it. written long ago and now he is unable to confirm it.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Health explained on October 29, to questions from this newspaper, that “that paragraph was uploaded to the website by mistake”, that “it was withdrawn on October 22” and that “it is not included in the decree”. At least until last Tuesday, that original information was retained. Now, as amended, it complies with the recommendations of the Ministry of Health, based on the manual of good practices, and on the legislation itself, in force since June. In addition, it has included a section on the right to withdraw at any time during the procedure.
Meanwhile, applicants for euthanasia have suffered obstacles during these months. On September 3, a woman, sitting in an armchair in her apartment in Madrid, told this newspaper that the pain prevented her from living, that in July she had gone to the Gómez Ulla Hospital to ask to be helped to die, and that not even her Neither the community nor the center gave him an answer. What would happen if the process was lengthened? “I have alternatives. They are not nice, but there are, ”she said. “But psychologically it is very violent. It is violent to think: “I am committing suicide.” I do not want that. I don’t want to commit suicide. I just want you to help me stop suffering. Nothing more. For me it is inconceivable that there is a law and that it cannot be applied ”. For her, the norm did not arrive on time and she committed suicide on Sunday, September 19, in a hotel room.
Conscientious objection
Now, with the commission already operational, there will be one more problem for those who decide to request this benefit: the conscientious objection of the professionals. It was one of the problems that this woman had at Gómez Ulla, and also Javier on October 12 with the first neurologist who treated him. He did not tell him that he was a conscientious objector and he realized when the palliative team sent by that specialist arrived at his house. “They tried to convince me not to request euthanasia, they asked me if I had thought about my family, that they had patients who had been bedridden for eight years, who communicated with their eyes and who were happy,” he explained the first time he told his story on SER, in September.
Article 16 of the law, which regulates conscientious objection of health professionals, states that it is “an individual decision of the health professional directly involved in its implementation” and that “health administrations will create a registry of health professionals who are conscientious objectors” in order to “guarantee a proper management of the provision of aid for dying ”. But in no case should this objection impair the right, as specified in article 14, for the provision of aid to die by health services: “It will be carried out in public, private or subsidized health centers, and at home, without the access and quality of care of the provision being impaired by the exercise of the conscientious objection to health or the place where it is carried out ”.
Subscribe here to our daily newsletter about Madrid.
#Javier #patient #ALS #Madrid #legally #undergo #euthanasia #Wednesday