Breaking the life timer.

In the same week that one woman is cleared of murdering her daugher and another sentenced to nine years for helping to end her son's life, Sir Terry Pratchett has entered the debate over Euthanasia. For those of you who aren't familiar with Pterry's situation, he has a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer's disease which affects his communications skills: not something a talented author like him would wish for. He has called for the creation of tribunals to hear the pro's and con's for each case so that the relatives are not put in the same situation as the two women who are subjects of the news items linked to above. I will agree that there were slightly differing situations, but I cannot agree that Frances Inglis' case was wildly different from Kay Gilderdale's.

This is not the first time I have blogged on this subject: I made mention of it in September. when the case of Debbie Purdy a sufferer of MS (very similar to my own condition) came into the news.

What ever your own views, I say this: I am in agreement with the majority of people who think that this situation where someone has made the concious choice to end their lives risks putting their relatives in jail for helping them do it. In Frances Inglis' trial, the prosecution appears to have made her actions to appear malicious. I disagree the only malice shown here is by the system wishing to legally prolong the agony of a terminally ill person's life for no other reason than out-dated laws and the institutionalised mistrust of people's motives!

We do not permit the suffering of a seriously ill animal to be prolonged, why should we permit this cruelty to be exacted on our fellow humans?

Being in a somewhat similar position as Sir Terry; it may not be Alzheimer's, but it is still an incurable, degenerative disease which will eventually cripple me, I offer him,  Frances, Kay and their families my wholehearted emotional support.

The Joy of Stillness.

There are times where my body will not stop jerking about - literally. If the inflamation in the nerve tissue in my neck gets really bad, then muscles all over my body begin to twitch. They don't do this violently, and if my arms or my legs begin to do this and I concentrate hard, I can stop it in the limb in question. That said, I can't concentrate on more than one area of my body at any one time, so the rest of the body is still twitching away. It makes writing, typing or any job that requires manual dexterity very difficult.

The joy comes at that point some seconds after the last spasm, twitch or jerk has actually finished and my body is finally at rest. It is almost a divine pleasure to not be moving any more.