Widower says his wife would’ve chosen assisted dying but instead became ‘living skeleton’published at 11:21 BST
11:21 BST
Rozina Sini
BBC Your Voice
Image source, Janice CuerImage caption,
Jenny Short passed away yesterday after being diagnosed with cancer
As MPs continue to debate the assisted dying bill, readers have been sending in their thoughts.
Frank Short’s wife Jenny died yesterday at a care home, after being diagnosed with cancer in summer.
Short, from Shepton Mallet, Somerset, says by the end of Jenny’s life, his “extremely active” wife was “a shadow of her former self and looked like a living skeleton”.
“This was not a dignified death,” he says, and he believes if she had the choice, she would have “terminated her life when she was still her”.
He explains they both caught a virus in February, but she never recovered.
She was diagnosed with terminal cancer at the end of July and went to a care home near Wales and was there for six weeks as she “gradually deteriorated”.
“At the end she could not communicate, she could not move, she could not swallow, she had not eaten for weeks and had been unable to take fluids for several days.”
“The assisted dying bill should pass,” he says, praising the care home staff but saying his wife had “no control”.
“This made my wife suffer.”
