‘Mum took her own life alone — now I face the same fate’ | UK | News | EUROtoday

Josh Cook has identified since he was 18 that he’ll more than likely take his personal life — and he desires to be allowed to do it with medical help. The 34-year-old has Huntington’s illness, an incurable inherited dysfunction that causes nerve cells within the mind to regularly break down and die.

Symptoms, which his medical doctors predict will begin across the age of 55, can embrace reminiscence and considering issues, lack of muscle management and problem swallowing and talking. Josh’s mum Lisa additionally had Huntington’s and took her personal life one 12 months in the past. He stated: “I walked in to find my mum dead. The worst thing for me was the fact that I couldn’t say goodbye, I couldn’t sit there and hold her hand.

“I had looked after her for five years full-time, ten years in total. To then not being there with her at the end is the thing that hurts me the most.”

Painter and decorator Josh found he had inherited Huntington’s after exams on the age of 18. He has come to phrases with the prognosis however desires the precise to finish his life on his personal phrases when his illness progresses.

Josh, of Huddersfield, has chosen to not have kids to keep away from passing the situation on, however enjoys teaching beneath 10s kids’s rugby.

He stated: “My fear is I don’t want my stepson or any of the kids that I coach to ever see me as anything but healthy.

“I want the memories to stay as memories of me, not of the illness. Without this change, I’ll have to go the same way my mum did.”

He added: “I haven’t given up, I do all the research programmes going and I want them to find a way to fix it.”

The authorized possibility of assisted dying would act like a “safety net”, stated, permitting him to reside for longer with the illness, reasonably than ending his life sooner whereas nonetheless bodily ready.

Urging MPs to recognise that the present legislation is “cruel, unjust and unfair”, her added: “You have hundreds of people every year having to go about these discussions in the dark and do things without medical training. It can go wrong and people can end up in worse states.

“It needs to be brought into the light. We need to have safeguarding that’s written in, and it is so restrictive, it’s so careful. It would finally stop any chance of coercion, because at the moment nobody cares until the person’s dead.

“Without this change, we will stay with an archaic law that is truly making people suffer. At the times when they should be shown the most compassion, we’re showing them the least.”

• When life is tough, Samaritans are right here — day or evening, 12 months a 12 months. You can name them without spending a dime on 116 123, e-mail them at jo@samaritans.org, or go to samaritans.org to seek out your nearest department.