Wigan grandad with incurable cancer supports assisted dying bill

MP Kim Leadbeater’s bill, proposing such a change in the law, begins its passage through Parliament on November 29 and 72-year-old Ashton grandfather Brian Griffin is backing it to the hilt.

While well at the moment after receiving a second stem cell transplant three years ago, Brian knows that eventually its effects will wear off, there will be no further transplants and only chemotherapy and palliative care will remain available.

He says that palliative care is fine when it works, but he knows of people – including a loved one – who have eventually suffered intense pain that the doctors can’t do anything about, and he says that the only humane response in that situation is to end the person’s suffering.

MPs will be given a free vote on the bill which proposes a law which would be applicable only to over-18s of sound mind and with fewer than six months to live, whose case would have to be approved by two doctors and a judge.

Brian taught biology at Cansfield, Park and The Byrchall High Schools, becoming head of department and an advanced skills teacher before having to curtail his career after being diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2007.

Surgery and chemo tackled that particular illness, but three years later he bizarrely suffered a shattered arm picking up just a 3kg weight and, after much puzzlement from various doctors, it was finally concluded that he had multiple myeloma: a cancer of the bone marrow.

His first stem cell transplant gave him an above-average 10 healthy years, but then he needed another one in 2021 and knows that second transplants don’t last as long. The NHS does not offer more than two.

Brian said: “Once a second transplant wears off, it’s just chemotherapy until you get fed up or pass away. To be honest it was such an horrendous experience having the second transplant that I wouldn’t go through it again unless it was guaranteeing me many more years.

"It's not the myeloma that kills you. Because it’s a blood cancer it affects other organs, usually the kidneys, and that is not a nice way to go.

"A relative of mine had a horrible, horrible death, squirming around on the bed for hours and hours in total agony and the medical staff were refusing to give them any more pain relief.

"That person would have benefited from assisted dying and I don’t want to find myself in that situation. Let’s face it: if a dog or other pet was suffering like that, everyone would think that the only humane thing to do would be to help it on its way.

"But because we are talking about human beings, there is a different reaction and suffering is excrutiatingly prolonged.

"Paliative care can be excellent, but in some – certainly not all – cases it only works for so long and then the pain begins to break through.”

Brian said that there used to be an unwritten understanding that doctors would help certain patients “on their way a little quicker than otherwise” to ease the suffering but after the Harold Shipman case, where the Hyde GP killed patients with lethal injections when they weren’t terminally ill, the law tightened up again.

At present, the only recourse for Brian, should his transplant fail and palliative care prove ineffective, would be to head to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland.

But that, he said, would cost £15,000 and he would have to go on his own because if he were accompanied by wife Denise or either of his children, they would be at risk of prosecution.

He said: “The bill seems fine to me with plenty of checks and balances. It would be the most tightly regulated assisted dying law in the world if it were passed.

"There are religious groups, some receiving funding to try to get it stopped, and others, including Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson for whom I have great respect, talking about the ‘slippery slope’ of this law then allowing relatives to bump off disabled relatives they want rid of.

"But the religious arguments strike me as ridiculous, and the slippery slope argument is about something that is just not going to happen. This law would only apply to people whom two doctors agree have less than six months to live, are compos mentis and a judge will be involved as well.

"If this law isn’t passed or my health deteriorates before it is, I suppose I could go to Switzerland if I had the money, but I would much rather give that to my children.”

Denise said: “Brian went through chemotherapy on two occasions and he found it difficult dealing with that.

"I am concerned about how Brian will deal with it if he needs it again.

"If it’s your choice not to participate in assisted dying, I’m sure you don’t have to. But you should have the choice to be able to participate in it, and the only way to do that is to make assisted dying legal.”

Brian added: “Other people can have palliative care but I don’t want it. I am prepared to sacrifice a few months of living with extreme pain to go sooner and more comfortably.

"Of course every care must be taken that a patient isn’t being coerced into doing this or they don’t know what they are asking for.

"But when the pain gets really bad I want the right to be able to say ‘now is the time for me to go.’”