Oregon’s aid in dying law: Three doctors reflect on their experiences

by LAURA KANE

Since Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act was passed in the mid-1990s, doctors have had to reconcile their Hippocratic oath with prescribing medication to end a life. Here are the experiences of some doctors in the state.

when doctors grieve

Dr. Eric Walsh

In 1994, Dr. Eric Walsh wrote an article in a local newsletter explaining why he voted against legalizing medical aid in dying. Walsh, a medical director of a small hospice, wrote that it would be impossible for a doctor to know a patient well enough to make such a crucial decision.

By the time the law came into effect in 1997, Walsh realized that he had written about one of the central fallacies of being a doctor — that you can know a patient better than they know themselves. “It’s the patient who has the disease, not you,” he said. “I just have to be there to listen to them, decide they’re not mentally ill, decide they have six months to live, and let them control the timing and manner of their death.”

Walsh said the first request he received was a profound emotional experience. The patient, a well-educated man with a strong marriage, had terminal cancer and was in so much pain he had to lie on the floor of the doctor’s office. Walsh wrote the prescription, but patient never used it.

“I can’t tell you how relieved I felt,” Walsh recalled. “It’s like an insurance policy against suffering.”

The palliative-care doctor has written 20 such prescriptions in 18 years, but one of his patients was Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old newlywed with a terminal brain tumour who moved from California to Oregon for aid in dying in 2014. She became the public face of the assisted-death movement in the U.S., prompting her home state to recently adopt legislation.

Walsh’s voice changes as he speaks about Maynard, making clear the emotional bond forged between doctor and patient in these cases.

“She was an amazing human being,” he said. “She was brilliant. She spoke in paragraphs that sounded as though she had written them out and edited them … She was very clear-eyed and thoughtful and intent.”

Asked how he felt when she used the medication, he replied simply, “really sad.”

Dr. Kenneth Stevens

Jeanette Hall was inconsolable the first time she met Dr. Kenneth Stevens. It was 2000, and Hall had been diagnosed with inoperable anal cancer. As she was leaving the hospital, she said a staff member asked her whether she had a burial plot. She was unequivocal — she wanted aid in dying.

Stevens, an oncologist, explained that while her tumour was inoperable, it could be treated with chemotherapy with a good chance of success. Hall refused. Without treatment, she had six months to live, meaning she qualified for aid in dying.

After about four weeks of urging her to do the treatment, Stevens learned she had a son training to be a police officer. “Wouldn’t you like to see him graduate?” he asked her. “Wouldn’t you like to see him get married?” Finally, Hall agreed to the chemotherapy. The tumour melted away.

Sixteen years later, Hall credits Stevens with saving her life. “If it weren’t for Dr. Stevens, I wouldn’t be here,” she said, beaming. “It’s great to be alive.”

Doctors who support the law are dismissive of Hall’s story. Dr. David Grube said any reasonable doctor would have urged her to undergo the treatment, while Dr. Peter Reagan said the story is proof the law enabled doctor and patient to have difficult conversations openly.

But Stevens, president of opposition group Physicians for Compassionate Care and who, like the group’s national director Dr. William Toffler, lost his wife to cancer, takes a different view. He said Oregon’s law has allowed some doctors to lose touch with their purpose — to cure patients.

“The law is to protect the physician, it’s not to protect the patient,” he said. “As long as the patient qualifies, it’s a licence to kill.”

Dr. Peter Reagan

When Dr. Peter Reagan voted for medical aid in dying in 1994, he was more concerned with another measure on the ballot to fund libraries. He hadn’t thought much about how the Death with Dignity Act would impact his work as a family doctor, until the law finally came into effect in 1997.

The following year, he was referred an 84-year-old patient who’d had breast cancer on and off for 30 years. She was suffering, terminal and unwavering in her request for aid in dying. “She was very, very clear,” Reagan recalled. “There was just not a scrap, shred of doubt about her.”

It was only when he called the pharmacy that he learned he was the first doctor in the state to prescribe the medication. Although doctors are not required to be present, he was with her family when she died. Before she took the pills, she asked him to kiss her on the cheek.

“Somebody says to you, ‘I want to talk about the possibility of aid in dying,’ all of a sudden you’re in their family. Suddenly, you’re intimate,” he said. “With her, I almost felt like I was on board. I was dying too. The idea that I would wake up the next morning — I hadn’t thought about that until it happened.”

Reagan, now retired and a spokesman for advocacy group Compassion and Choices, said the emotional intensity of the experience grows with each person who requests aid in dying. He said he never suggests using the law to anyone and prescribing the pills is a difficult thing to do every time.

“People have to talk you into it,” he said. “The moment when they actually successfully talk you into it and you say, ‘You know what, I see your point, I respect it so much and I respect you so much that I will do this for you,’ that moment is so filled with relief and appreciation.”

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