Heather Hancock, a Christian author and an editor who was born with cerebral palsy, says she has lived with her condition her entire life, and "as you get older, it starts to take a toll."
Her bout with the health system started years ago as she dealt a series of muscle spasms that essentially paralyzed her. In 2017 and again in 2018, she was hospitalized at the same facility in Victoria, Canada, where the first to mention assisted suicide to her was an emergency room doctor who had unsuccessfully tried to treat her uncontrolled, severe pain from these spasms.
"I, of course, refused," she tells AFN.
The second pitch came from a neurologist who told her the ward had nothing to offer in the way of treatment.
And then in 2019, there was a third instance at Medicine Hat Regional Hospital in Alberta
"I had a nurse caring for me, or she was supposed to be caring for me, but she had quite the attitude," Hancock recalls.
After she had struggled – unassisted – to get to the restroom and back to her bed, the nurse told her, "You should really consider MAID."
Canada presents Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID), or assisted suicide, as a health benefit/service. It has been legal in Canada since 2016, when the Canadian Supreme Court legalized it for the terminally ill. It was expanded in 2022 to welcome the disabled, the mentally ill, and even healthy people living with a chronic disease. Children seemed to be the next target.
"I looked at her, and I said, 'God put me in this world, and He's the only one that's taking me out of this world.'" Hancock accounts. "And then she looked at me and said, 'You're being utterly selfish. This isn't living. This is existing,' which just completely flabbergasted me."
When the exchange was reported to a "mortified" head nurse, the MAID-pushing nurse was removed from Hancock's care, and the subject was not brought up again.
She has since been in and out of hospitals in Saskatchewan, where she currently resides in an assisted living facility, and she hopes and prays that no one else tries to guilt trip her into going through with the procedure.
Meanwhile, she remains an active writer and activist against Canada's growing euthanasia program.
