Do Patients Without a Terminal Illness Have the Right to Die?
One of the doctors wanted to know why, despite everything, Paula Ritchie was still alive. 'I'm just curious,' she said. 'What has kept you from attempting suicide since August of 2023?'
'I'm not very good at it,' Paula said. 'Obviously.' Then she started to cry. She said that everything was getting worse. She said she didn't want to suffer anymore. 'This is a more dignified way to go than suicide.'
Paula was lying in the big bed that she had pulled into the center of the living room, facing an old TV and a window that looked out on a row of garbage bins. The room's brown linoleum floors were stained, and its walls were mostly unadorned. On a bookshelf, there was a small figurine of an angel, her arm raised in offering. At 52, Paula had a pale, unblemished face and a tangle of dark hair that fell around her waist. The day before the appointment, in January this year, she washed her hair for the first time in weeks, but then she was not able to lift herself out of the bathtub. When, after hours, she managed to get out, her pain and dizziness was so bad that she had to crawl across the floor.
Dr. Matt Wonnacott sat in a folding chair at the foot of the bed. He was there as Paula's 'primary assessor': one of two independent physicians, along with Dr. Elspeth MacEwan, a psychiatrist, who drove through the snow to Smiths Falls, Ontario, to evaluate Paula's eligibility for Canada's Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program — what critics call physician-assisted suicide.
'You're a difficult case,' Wonnacott admitted. Another clinician had already assessed Paula and determined that she was ineligible — but there was no limit to how many assessments a patient could undergo, and Paula had called the region's MAID coordination service every day, sometimes every hour, demanding to be assessed again, until the nurse on the other line had practically begged Wonnacott and his colleagues to take Paula off her roster.
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