"The regime and the Supreme Court of Canada, they are interested in saving money and getting rid of patients with disabilities, denying the right to life"

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.  .- Confucius                                            Mr. Corbeil says: I am free - I'm free...

 
Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.  .- Confucius                     Judges from Supreme Court of Canada before to approve any regulation with respect the right to die, should take in consideration the case of Mr. Robert Corbeil, and thousands of other cases. Mr Corbeil he is expressing the necessity to have proper medical and family care. Also, is grateful to know that he is counting with his own equipment necessary to live. The Regime and the Supreme Court of Canada, they are interested to save money and getting rid of patients with disabilities, denying the right to life.                                                                                                                                                          

He was given the right to die a gentle death 22 years ago. He didn’t take it. But he’s glad he was given the choice

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Graeme Hamilton | October 17, 2014 | Last Updated: Oct 17 6:00 PM ET
More from Graeme Hamilton | @grayhamilton

Christinne Muschi for National PostRobert Corbeil — left paralyzed after an accident in 1992 — looks outside at his home in Sainte-Adele, Quebec, October 17, 2014.                                         SAINTE-ADÈLE, Que. – Completely paralyzed from the neck down following an accident at age 33, confined to a wheelchair in a long-term care centre, Robert Corbeil saw no point in living. So in 1991, a year after his accident, he asked a court to be allowed to starve to death.              “I don’t see myself stuck like this in a wheelchair for another 35 years, not at my age,” he testified when Superior Court Justice Gontran Rouleau visited his bedside. Mr. Corbeil said he was seeking a gentle death, “to stop this nonsense, stop tearing myself apart and fighting without having any future, any hope.”                                                                                                                    The January 1992 decision granting Mr. Corbeil’s request not to be force-fed was a landmark in Canadian law. Mr. Corbeil had the right to refuse treatment and “die with dignity,” Judge Rouleau ruled. Université de Montréal ethicist David Roy wrote at the time that the court had recognized that even in cases when a patient is not terminally ill, “prolonging life at any cost, particularly at the cost of unbearable suffering for the patient, proves to be an attitude that is more than deplorable.”                                                                                                                        Twenty-two years later, the debate over death with dignity continues to rage in Canada, and Mr. Corbeil, 58, is watching it with interest.                                                                                                   Related

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• Assisted suicide case begins at Supreme Court of Canada: ‘No one wants to die if living is better’                                                                                                                                       After his court victory, he decided not to go through with his fast immediately. And then, slowly, things started getting better. A specially equipped van bought by his family meant he could regularly get out of the long-term care centre, known in Quebec as a CHSLD, and take in a movie or go to a restaurant. He fell in love with a woman who came to visit her ailing mother at the centre, and today they live together in a house custom-built by his brother and two sons.                                                                                                                     “It makes us see that we can live, that we can still have an acceptable quality of life when we are not imprisoned in a CHSLD,” he said in an interview this week.

In Ottawa, the Supreme Court of Canada heard arguments Wednesday in a case seeking to overturn the prohibition against assisting a patient’s suicide. In Quebec, the provincial government this year became the first jurisdiction in North America to legalize euthanasia, clearing the way for physicians to end the life of a dying patient by lethal injection. But while some might be tempted to see Mr. Corbeil, 58, as a living, breathing argument against assisted death, he remains thankful that he was given the option to die by the court in 1992. He sees the current debate as one over whether suffering people should have a choice.                                            “If you’re talking about rights that are being sought, I am in total agreement, because they allow us to choose,” he said.                                                                                                                                “If they will offer the help to have an acceptable life, I will choose to live. If I don’t have any help and I’m going to be in a prison, I prefer to die.”                                                                                On May 23, 1990, Mr. Corbeil was married and employed as a carpenter when he took his two boys out for a spin on an all-terrain vehicle he was thinking of buying. He hit a hole, the ATV                   tipped and as he tried to protect hi sons, the vehicle landed on him.

                                                                                                      Christinne Muschi for National PostRobert Corbeil — left paralyzed after an accident in 1992 — outside his home with his partner Martine Alles in Sainte-Adele, Quebec, October 17, 2014.        After nearly a year in a rehabilitation facility, he returned home, but his family was ill equipped to care for him. He was moved into a CHSLD, but when neurological results in September 1991 confirmed that there was no hope for improvement, he informed his family that he wanted to die.             His wife, his mother, his doctor, a counselor, a social worker and a chaplain all tried to dissuade him, the court heard, but his mind was made up. “I am stuck with total quadriplegia that leaves me unable to move from my shoulders to my toes,” he testified. “After the doctors informed me there is no possibility of a physical recovery, I said, ‘That’s enough. I can’t continue. It’s too hard.’ ” In a sworn affidavit, he asked that he not be fed or given any medical treatment to prolong his life. He requested appropriate medication to ease his suffering, “so as to reserve for me a gentle death.”                                                                                                                               Judge Rouleau concluded that feeding was a form of medical treatment, and Mr. Corbeil was within his rights to refuse it. “In principle, every person has the right to enjoy life, and as a corollary, he also has the right to die with dignity and according to his choice,” the judge wrote.     Asked today why he did not follow through with his life-ending fast, Mr. Corbeil said it was no single revelation but a gradual re-discovery of what life could offer. Family, in particular his mother, visited more frequently and took him on excursions beyond the walls of the CHSLD. His marriage ended in divorce, but he remains grateful to his ex-wife for raising his two sons. “They are very well brought-up, and I am proud,” he said.

Christinne Muschi for National PostRobert Corbeil at home in Sainte-Adele, Quebec, October 17, 2014.                                                                                                                                    Technological advances have granted him a degree of independence. He operates his computer via a tiny mirror on his glasses that directs the cursor as he moves his head. A straw allows him to click the cursor by breathing. He commands his wheelchair with a cephalic joystick, which uses his head movements to guide the chair. He can turn on the TV when he pleases and open the door using a baton held in his mouth to push a button on his wheelchair.                                              But he would not have been able to move into his own home 10 years ago had he not met Martine Allès during her frequent visits to her mother, who was on the same floor of the CHSLD as Mr. Corbeil. She said she never imagined herself in the dual role of spouse and vital caregiver for someone with a serious disability. “The heart is stronger than us,” she said.

Dr. Roy, the ethicist who commented on Mr. Corbeil’s 1992 court victory, is now director of a research lab on ethics and aging at the Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal and editor in chief of the Journal of Palliative Care.                                                                                                      He opposes Quebec’s euthanasia law, due to take effect by the end of next year, fearing it will lead to abuses. While there are times when it is “ethically tolerable” for a physician to end a patient’s life, he said, it will come to be seen as a normal practice once it is enshrined in law.        Still, he does not think Mr. Corbeil’s case should be held up as an argument against assisted death. “It’s a remarkable story. It really is,” he said.

Christinne Muschi for National PostRobert Corbeil at home, in Sainte-Adele, Quebec, October 17, 2014.                                                                                                                                            “But we can’t generalize it. Some people would like to say, ‘See! Corbeil! That can happen to anybody.’ I’m sorry. It cannot happen to anybody …. Human beings are all so infinitely different, and that’s why we cannot have one law, either approving of euthanasia or prohibiting euthanasia that can apply without exception to anybody.                                                                           “I think it’s better to keep the law against homicide, against administering death, but being wise enough when cases come up not to prosecute or not to convict.”                                                           Mr. Corbeil believes society needs to do a better job helping the suffering so, whenever possible, they choose life. Last summer, 42-year-old Pierre Mayence, a Quebec man living in a CHSLD after a 2010 skydiving accident left him quadriplegic, invoked Mr. Corbeil’s case as a precedent to seek the right not to be force-fed. He was successful and died of starvation in September after a two-month fast, La Presse reported. Mr. Corbeil wonders whether Mr. Mayence “could have seen it’s possible to continue with help.”                                                                                                   He said facilities providing long-term care need be more humane. “For those who see no end or cure, who suffer and who decide to die, it is their choice. If it is their own choice, I agree,” he said. “But even more, I support the government acting on its promises, providing support for people to remain home with necessary help. It will cost society much less than putting them in a CHSLD.”                                                                                                                                                    For Mr. Corbeil, escaping the CHSLD has opened a world he thought was forever closed. After his accident, he had given away all his carpentry tools, but now saws, hammers and screwdrivers hang neatly in his garage. If a repair is needed, he is able to instruct someone exactly how to do it. When he moved into his house, he taught Ms. Allès’ teenage son how to plant the cedar hedge that thrives today. He has also become an advocate for patients in the Laurentians region. As Ms. Allès joked, his tongue still works fine.                                                                                                 There are still plenty of frustrations. The wages paid the home caregivers sent by the local health centre are low, and they tend not to last long before they find something that pays better. A repairman just advised him that his electric bed, which allows caregivers to raise and lower him, will soon need to be replaced at a cost of $3,000.                                                                                      But his life today is incomparably better than it was in the dark days after his accident. As he said goodbye to a reporter Friday morning, he discussed his plans for the rest of the day. “We’re going to talk a bit, then we’ll go to Saint-Jérôme to buy some groceries. After that, who knows? I’m free. Maybe we’ll visit some family,” he said. “I’m free.”