This episode deals with the issue of suicide, and as such it might be triggering or upsetting. If you or someone you know needs support, there are people trained to listen and to offer the support you may need.
As governments cut public services and offer only meagre support for those living with disabilities, assisted death risks becoming a policy substitute for care and dignity.
Scholar Megan Linton argues that Canada’s expansion of medically-assisted dying reflects a deeper neoliberal logic—one that narrows how we imagine disability, chronic illness, and the possibilities of a more just future.
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Talk Suicide Canada is a service that’s available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every single day of the year. You can call 1-833-456-4566. You can also send a text message to 45645 between the hours of 4 p.m. and midnight Eastern Time.
If you’re a young person, you can also call the Kids Help Phone 24 Hours a day, 7 days a week, every day of the year, at 1-800-668-6868, or you can send a text to 686868.
Other resources:
Circle of Care: KUU-US First Nations and Aboriginal Crisis Line Support Available 24 Hrs. Adults – 1-800-588-8717; youth – 250-723-2040
Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention — Support services directory
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The goal of the long-term disability industry is to not get involved with underwriting the costs of treatment of chronic diseases such as long-COVID and long-Lyme. MAiD would seem to fit well with shareholder preferences and industry goals. We have a growing, ignored and hidden epidemic of Lyme and tick-borne diseases in Canada that the insurance industry red-flagged as being too expensive to treat in 1994. Complex disseminated Lyme is an invisible, debilitating disease caused by Borrelia burgdorferi and we know that it is treatable using a combination of antibiotics. PHAC is headed by two infectious disease doctors and PHAC’s priority is the preservation of the antibiotic supply over returning Canadians to health. Family docs have to live with their patients and have been abandoned by their infectious disease colleagues. Infectious disease doctors refuse to recognize chronic Lyme disease and are very uncomfortable with microbes that can cause neurologic disease. Physicians who treat Lyme appropriately are in danger of being investigated and losing their medical licence. Diseases that kill suddenly grab doctor’s attention but Lyme seldom kills outright, you just wish you were dead. Patients are being disbelieved and disrespected; suicide is not an uncommon outcome. Physicians can do something the rest of us can’t, they can bury their mistakes.
I was referred to M.A.I.D. rather than surgery, and I believe every word I’ve just read here. I was told that if we didn’t have the services in our community then I should look into getting medically assisted suicide instead.