Mistaken diagnosis led to me making needless plans to end it all

The ballot successful favour of the Scottish Assisted Dying Bill astatine Stage 1 fills maine with dread. 

I cognize from idiosyncratic acquisition that doctors tin marque superior errors and that radical volition dice needlessly if this authorities is yet passed.

Any MSP who voted for the Bill today, and who ends up voting it into instrumentality successful the coming months, should the Bill marque further advancement done its stages, indispensable recognize this.

It has been emphasised that this is simply a conscience contented for MSPs. 

That is correct. MSPs voting for the instrumentality to alteration volition person to fulfill their consciences and face the chiseled probability that – nevertheless inadvertently – they volition astir surely facilitate the decease of radical who had nary crushed to die.

We aren’t rather determination yet. Fortunately, this was a Stage 1 ballot only. As the Bill sponsor and others person made clear, this ballot was connected the wide principles of the Bill, not each the finer detail.

I admit that galore MSPs voted for the Bill astatine Stage 1 truthful that the statement whitethorn continue. 

For many, it was qualified enactment only, and they whitethorn alteration their caput astatine a aboriginal day earlier it comes into law. I sincerely anticipation they bash so.

Since January past year, I person been done a surviving nightmare aft being misdiagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease (MND). 

In my despair connected proceeding the diagnosis, I instantly started readying however I could extremity my beingness earlier the unwellness took hold.

As I near the doctor’s country pursuing the diagnosis, I rang a person and asked if helium would travel with maine to the Dignitas session successful Switzerland. He reluctantly agreed.

Although I person nary specializer aesculapian knowledge, I knew capable astir MND to cognize it is simply a terrifying condition. 

The sufferer gradually loses each musculus strength, starring yet to an inability to breathe, swallow oregon adjacent speak.

The Harley Street specializer I had seen referred maine to 1 of the UK’s starring neurologists for a 2nd opinion.

He gave maine a afloat assemblage introspection and said that helium agreed. MND was confirmed.

From that infinitesimal on, each the correspondence with the infirmary said my information was MND alternatively than suspected MND.

He was keen that I should enactment successful cause trials. Rather to my shame, I declined. All drugs person broadside effects, and I could not look further hardship arsenic I prepared for death.

Being azygous and surviving alone, I could not contemplate however I would header with the gradual carnal decline. I person bully friends and household but however could I inquire them to woody with this?

Suicide seemed the champion enactment – adjacent though, arsenic a person to Catholicism, I realised this was against the Church’s teaching.

But my archetypal feelings of panic and despair began dilatory to recede. There were 2 reasons.

The archetypal was the fantabulous attraction I received astatine the hands of the NHS. I was fixed a specializer caregiver to interaction astatine immoderate clip of the time oregon night.

I was surrounded by specialists to assistance maine negociate immoderate problems I had with movement, breathing oregon swallowing.

I was sent to a palliative attraction doc to sermon my end-of-life wishes, and I was contacted by societal services who asked if I needed immoderate modifications to my flat.

But the 2nd crushed was that I was not experiencing the expected symptoms of MND. Indeed, I was starting to consciousness somewhat better.

The fasciculations had stopped and the weakness successful my close manus was hardly getting worse.

Initially, the elder specializer said that MND was an unpredictable information and that sometimes it progressed precise slowly.

But by October 2024 the anomaly of my continuing bully wellness was truthful large that I was sent for further nervus conductivity tests. Although these had been carried retired successful January, the neurologist sent maine to a antithetic specializer to repetition them.

The tests progressive inserting needles successful my arms and moving a existent done them.

The effect was virtually unbelievable. The doc told maine I had been misdiagnosed. I was suffering not from MND but from a mild auto- immune information called Multifocal Motor Neuropathy which is not life-threatening and for which determination are treatments available.

Ironically my sister had recovered notation to this milder information backmost successful February 2024 but the proposition had been dismissed by the Harley Street specialist.

What lessons tin beryllium drawn from my acquisition successful narration to the Bill that has conscionable been approved?

The main ‘safeguard’ of the Bill is that 2 doctors indispensable hold that the idiosyncratic requesting assisted termination indispensable beryllium terminally ill. This is intended to springiness rock-solid assurance against mistakes being made.

In my lawsuit 2 eminent specialists agreed that I had MND and that, successful the worst case, I could person betwixt 2 and six months to live. They were some wrong, but I believed them.

If I had taken them astatine their word, and this Bill were law, I could beryllium dormant by now. No uncertainty friends and acquaintances would accidental that I had taken a brave determination to dice with dignity.

But it would person been a mistake and, erstwhile made, nary further investigations would follow. I would person died needlessly.

The world is that the Scottish assisted termination Bill is adjacent much unsafe than the English equivalent. As we’ve seen with the Leadbeater Bill southbound of the Border, a triumph astatine this signifier doesn’t by immoderate agelong of the imaginativeness mean it’s guaranteed to go law.

I fervently anticipation that it doesn’t.