A healthy and active British lady who before her death had worked with the elderly has ended her life in a Swiss clinic because she is afraid of getting too old and unable to kill herself.
Gill Pharoah, 75, who only suffered no illness, but active decided to end her life with a lethal injection and even joked with the doctors before asking that they put a stop to her life. Pharaoh was afraid was afraid she probably would get a stroke, and her life will be miserable like that of her friend who had suffered the same fate. Pharaoh's friend lives a poor quality of life after her stroke, and she is afraid her own case might end up like that of her friend.
Pharaoh was accompanied by her partner,John Southall, 70, to the Swiss clinic in Basel. Southall is blaming the British government for the death of his friend, he said that Pharaoh would still be alive only if the government had a law in place that would allow to make living wills that state that they should be allowed to die, if they lost the ability to kill themselves.
Before her death, Pharaoh granted an interview with the Sunday times where she said :
I have looked after people who are old, on and off, all my life. I have always said, ‘I am not getting old. I do not think old age is fun.’ I know that I have gone just over the hill now. It is not going to start getting better. I do not want people to remember me as a sort of old lady hobbling up the road with a trolley.
I had so many friends with partners who, plainly, are a liability. I know you shouldn’t say that but I have this mental picture in my head of all you need to do, at my age, is break a hip and you are likely to go very much downhill from that
John Southall said that Pharaoh was afraid she might be having a stroke someday, and she is terrified as she has a friend who had a stroke and had been bed-bound for 10 years in a pathetic state. Travelling to Switzerland to end her life caused her unnecessary difficulties
Southall said :
If we had laws in this country where you could write an advance directive and say ‘If I have a stroke that disables me, I would like medical assistance to die,” she wouldn’t have had the fear of the stroke.
I am sure she would have been happy to stay around for longer. She couldn’t do that and therefore wasn’t prepared to take the risk.
She had to arrange foreign currency transfers to pay and arrange to fly there,
“On the last day or so of your life you don’t really want to have to go through airports. It would be nice if you could do it at home.
Pharaoh, from London has a daughter in California, and a son and grandson in Australia. She had worked at the hospital as a community nurse, spending half of her career, taking care of elders.
She also had 2 books to her name,“How to Manage Family Illness at Home” and “Careers in Caring.”
She suffered a severe back pain, but also was not on any medication, her partner said:
The fact is that many old people are a burden on society. Like all nurses, I have cared for the elderly as well as I could, but there were many occasions when I wondered why we were doing it. People who cannot accept this argument should work for a few months in a care home where many patients are demented, incontinent, unable to care for themselves, and have no visitors. I would like to be able to apply for a prescription which could be used if I ever feel like a quiet and peaceful exit before things get too bad.