Son MAiD pioneer Kay Carter plans assisted death after terminal cancer diagnosis
Price Carter is planning to die this summer.
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The 68-year-old has been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. He knows it will take his life eventually; before it does, he intends to die on his own terms with his family at his side.
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'I was told at the outset, 'This is palliative care, there is no cure for this.' So that made it easy,' he said in an interview from his home in Kelowna, B.C.
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Price has finished a first assessment and said he expects the second assessment deeming him eligible for the procedure to be completed this week. He spoke openly and calmly about his final days and his decision to end his life.
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'I'm at peace with this, I truly am, and I would have been years ago,' he said.
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It's been nearly a year since he first started experiencing symptoms and got a diagnosis. Until a couple of months ago, he said, he was swimming and rowing. He and his wife Danielle went golfing recently, playing best ball.
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'She dragged me down that course,' he said with a laugh.
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But his energy is starting to fade. He knows how he wants the next step to unfold.
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It was more than 15 years ago that Price, along with his sisters Marie and Lee and his brother-in-law Hollis, surreptitiously made their way to Switzerland to be with their mother on her final day.
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The 89-year-old was living with spinal stenosis and chose to go to a non-profit facility that provided medically assisted death. She became the 10th Canadian to do so.
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At the time, assisted death was illegal in Canada.
Kay Carter wrote a letter explaining her decision and her family helped draft a list of about 150 people to send it to after she died. She couldn't tell them her plans in advance because of the risk that Canadian authorities would try to stop her from going to Switzerland, or prosecute the family members who helped her.
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When she got to the Dignitas facility, she finalized the paperwork, settled in a bed and chased down the barbiturate that would stop her heart with Swiss chocolate.
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