{"id":9087,"date":"2011-05-31T14:53:18","date_gmt":"2011-05-31T13:53:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=9087"},"modified":"2011-11-22T16:18:56","modified_gmt":"2011-11-22T15:18:56","slug":"ann-mcpherson%e2%80%99s-i-should-have-been-able-to-choose-to-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2011\/05\/31\/ann-mcpherson%e2%80%99s-i-should-have-been-able-to-choose-to-die\/","title":{"rendered":"Ann McPherson: I should have been able to choose to die"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.bmj.com\/site\/blog\/icons\/ann_mcpherson.jpg\" alt=\"Ann McPherson\" width=\"160\" height=\"110\" align=\"left\" \/>The well known general practitioner and outstanding communicator Ann McPherson died on 28 May 2011 from pancreatic cancer. She is celebrated for her books for patients, including <em>The Diary of a Teenage Health Freak<\/em> (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bmj.com\/content\/339\/bmj.b3355.full\"><em>BMJ<\/em> 2009;339:b3355<\/a>); the DIPEx (Database of Individual Patient Experiences) charity and its websites (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.healthtalkonline.org\">www.healthtalkonline.org<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youthhealthtalk.org\/\">www.youthhealthtalk.org<\/a>); and Healthcare Professionals for Assisted Dying, the campaigning group that she established and chaired (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.hpad.org.uk\/\">www.hpad.org.uk<\/a>). This May, Ann received the BMJ Group\u2019s communicator of the year award (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bmj.com\/content\/342\/bmj.d1824.short\"><em>BMJ<\/em> 2011;342:d1824<\/a>). Here she gives her final message.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m feeling pretty bloody awful. The nurse and doctor came today to incise the abscess around my chest drain and made the unhelpful suggestion that I might need some antibiotics even though antibiotics make me sick. The GP certainly understands where I am coming from, but when I said that I can\u2019t understand why I have to carry on living like this and why I can\u2019t just die, the nurse said, \u2018Well you might change your mind.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think it very unlikely I will change my mind, and even if I did I don\u2019t care. It is nice to see people but if I had the choice there is no question that I would prefer to be dead than to see people. Because I feel so ill. I know everyone is different. It\u2019s nothing specific: I just feel ill, and there seems to be nothing that can make that better. I am already on large doses of morphine and midazolam and haloperidol so that I mostly don\u2019t have pain or sickness\u2014but I still feel ill.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI feel really furious at this. I think it is cruel. In my practice I saw people who felt like this, and I felt I had let them down. I think my GP thinks that, but all she can do is say is sorry and squeeze my hand.\u201d<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bmj.com\/content\/342\/bmj.d3424.full\">Obituary: Ann McPherson<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The well known general practitioner and outstanding communicator Ann McPherson died on 28 May 2011 from pancreatic cancer. She is celebrated for her books for patients, including The Diary of a Teenage Health Freak (BMJ 2009;339:b3355); the DIPEx (Database of Individual Patient Experiences) charity and its websites (www.healthtalkonline.org and www.youthhealthtalk.org); and Healthcare Professionals for Assisted [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2011\/05\/31\/ann-mcpherson%e2%80%99s-i-should-have-been-able-to-choose-to-die\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[223],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-bloggers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9087\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}