Dear Editor
I would just like to take this moment and say I agree with Stephen Fletcher the Member of Parliament for Charleswood, Man. who gave an interview a few weeks ago about his feeling on assisted suicide. I am also trapped in a body and a life that I hate and am fed up with. I am a 45-year-old deaf quadriplegic and I have been in an electric wheelchair for the past 20 years.
My first five years of being in a wheelchair I lived in a group home and had several bed sores and pneumonia. My parents have been my caregivers for the past 15 years or else my quality of life would have been pretty awful. I have been lucky to have been able to live in my own home with my parents. I would like this to continue, but now my parents are getting too old to take care of me and they also have health issues of their own. My future is looking pretty bleak with the prospect of going into a group home or a nursing home that is filled with 80- and 90-year-olds.
I have waited patiently over the years for there to be a miracle that would even give me back the use of my hands, but as the years go by I realize that will probably never happen in my life time, never mind the possibility of me walking again. I too have wanted to die for a very long time. I am sick and tired of living in a body I hate and would like the choice of when and how I die like Stephen and so many others like myself.
The government doesn't seem to understand that living in a group home or worse yet a nursing home is not a very good option. I have put up a good fight and my family and I are just tired of nobody listening to my needs or wants. People like Stephen Fletcher and I don't have any choice because Canada doesn't allow assisted suicide. So we are stuck living a life we hate!
Don Vetter
Unity
