Death wish list

The right to assisted dying” is bringing a sense of relief to many New Zealanders. But one year on from its introduction, there is frustration over the law's tight confines.

- RUTH NICHOL 

‘I love her!” says Gerry Molloy of the doctor who has been assigned to accompany her through the assisted dying process. They first met in June, just a few days after Molloy emailed the assisted dying service to inquire about whether she would be eligible for it.

“They rang me back within five minutes, and by the Monday, the doctor [her attending medical practitioner] had been assigned to me. It happened so fast it kind of blew my husband away, but I was so grateful for how quickly they responded.”

Molloy contacted the service, run by the Ministry of Health, shortly after she learnt that her just-diagnosed lung cancer had already spread to a small bone at the base of the skull called the clivus, and it was terminal. The pain from the secondary tumour was excruciating, much worse than the symptoms she was experiencing from her primary cancer. Radiation treatment and other palliative care have kept the pain largely under control – at least in the meantime.

“I don’t think it will be lung cancer that will get me, I think it will be the pain from that tumour,” she says, adding with a laugh that most of the doctors she has seen have no idea what a clivus is. “They all have to go home and google it.”

After being assessed by the first doctor, Molloy, 71, was assessed by a second one, known as an independent medical practitioner, whose job is to provide independent confirmation that a person has not been pressured into seeking an assisted death, and that they are likely to die within six months.

Soon, she had been approved for an assisted death. She has nominated the latest possible date to do it – six months after she got her approval, though she can bring that forward if necessary.