Ed,
Dementia was believed in past years as an aged person’s disease.
Dementia statistics by Professor Graeme Samuel AC, National President of Alzheimer’s Australia advised that dementia is the second most common death in Australia. In 2012 the estimated number of people living with dementia was 353,800 and by 2050 will be almost one million.
After a dementia diagnosis, some people live for many years with an acceptable quality of life. Therefore, a lengthy time is given towards documenting personal wishes legally with your GP in the ‘NSW dying with dignity advanced care directive’. Then living as well and pleasurably as one can do after being given a terminal illness diagnosis. Alzheimer’s Australia (in 2011) with Professor Coleen Cartwright put together a manual, “Planning for the End of Life for People with Dementia.” This manual, paper 23 part 2, is a “must have”. Professor Cartwright travelled around Australia, sharing her Advanced Care Directive, encouraging people to ensure that they document their dying wishes ASAP after a dementia diagnosis to ensure that the person with the dementia diagnosis can make their dying wishes legally acceptable and, in this documentation, spare the dementia sufferer and their family’s intense despair and grief, IF this is not done. To obtain the Manual paper 23 part 2, simply contact Alzheimer’s Australia on their free phone contact 1800100500, or Professor Cartwright, colleen.cartwright@scu.edu.au
Several years ago, I was diagnosed with a very early onset type of dementia. My father had died of Alzheimer’s disease. This experience led my husband and I to join the ‘Australia Alzheimer’s consumer advisory board’ in Canberra. Our main focus during our participation with the consumer advisory board was to visit nursing homes, particularly their dementia wards, to investigate their expertise and how they were trained towards caring for dementia patients. My focus was due to how badly my father had been treated in the 10 years prior to his dying, as well as my mother having to end her life in this horrid lack of “care wards” environment. They are called “the high care needs secured wards” most people are bed ridden. We visited many in NSW and WA.
After these viewings and personal experiences, I (with my family) have agreed if our present legal palliative dying procedure has not changed-into VAD (Voluntary Assisted Dying), I (with my husband) will have to go to Switzerland for me to be spared of such an ending of my life. These personal experiences caused us to become strong advocates towards supporting “end of life choices” groups campaigning for a change in present dying procedure laws. We joined ‘Christians Supporting Choice of Voluntary Assisted Dying’, ‘NSW Dying with Dignity’ and ‘Go Gentle National’.
March is NSW voting time. If you desire to have a personal “end of life choice” and would like to join the many people who so intensely desire to end their terminal illness when they themselves cannot endure it any more, write a simple letter to your electorate politician, asking if they would vote for a change in our present dying procedure law, as Victoria has done. Or “IF not” – “WHY not”?
(Name supplied but withheld by request)