I've Planned My Own Death

After being diagnosed with incurable cancer in 2016, Anita Brown has fought endlessly for the right to choose how she dies

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When the consultant told me softly that my bladder cancer was incurable, I could barely catch my breath. my mind flashed back to some of the patients I’d looked after in my job as a carer, and I felt dizzy. By the end some had been bed-bound, sedated by powerful medication or screaming in pain at the slightest touch. Shells of their former selves, they’d become so weak I had to wash them and help them go to the loo. was that going to happen to me, too?

In June 2015 I’d begun to suffer from what my GP believed were recurrent urinary tract and kidney infections. Despite repeated courses of antibiotics over 10 months, I was left exhausted, in pain and passing blood clots in my urine. I researched my symptoms online and some of the search results had been for bladder cancer, but I thought I couldn’t possibly have an ‘oldman’s’ cancer like that. In April 2016 my GP referred me for a cystoscopy, where a tiny camera is inserted into the urethra, so my bladder could be examined. With my husband Tim, 48, waiting outside, I lay on the bed and stared at the video screen. Suddenly a red, scaly mass appeared, and I froze.

Terrible news