After losing his beloved wife 26 years ago, Salford man Ed Green has been campaigning for a change in end-of-year life care since.
Believing they would be together until old age, Ed married Carol Green, who died at age 44 after a 14-month battle with stomach cancer.
Carol spent her final days in the hospital, where Ed believes that more could have been done to enable her to pass peacefully.
According to the charity Guts UK, every year about 6,700 people in the UK are diagnosed with stomach cancer, meaning that approximately one person in every 10,000 people has stomach cancer.
Even though Carol died in 1998, Ed still campaigns for a change in end-of-life care throughout Salford and the UK and has raised more than £100,00 in the past towards the cause and for local hospices.
His main motivation stems from the pain he saw his wife during her final days.
Ed said: “My wife died in severe pain, excruciating pain and I have to live with that,” he said: “She died on the 21st of March at 10.05 am on a Saturday morning in 1998.
“It’s important for me, and it always has been, to improve not only the care but I put where my money where my mouth is, I went out and raised £100,000 for St Ann’s Hospice.
“I don’t want people to be in the same position where they die in pain and agony and they can’t get the pain relief that they need.”
Ed claims that on the night Carol died, the syringe driver was locked in a cupboard and nobody had a key, so they could not attach a syringe driver until 9 am the next morning, leaving her in a lot of pain and distress overnight.
Ed later said: “There are improvements that should have been made and there are improvements that could have been made.”
After MPs in the House of Commons voted in favour of the ‘assisted dying’ bill, there have been many debates as to its purpose within the public.
After living through his experience first-hand, Ed has been vocal about his views on the matter.
“I agree with it, but there’s got to be big safeguards in regards to it,” he said. “In my opinion, I think where they say anybody that’s only got about six months to live, I think that should be reduced to three months.
“The reason why I say that is because six months seems to be a long time when you have got a family that loves that person so much,” Ed added.
“That three months then gives that person the opportunity to really think about it and discuss with their family and make a final decision. Maybe get someone to think about it at six months, but make the final decision at 3. That’s my opinion.
“If I had the choice with my wife and I had to make the decision, I would have said a month or six weeks before she died that I would allow her to die in peace.
“Those last weeks were indescribable because of the amount of pain that she was in. Even the last 24 hours she asked me to ‘chop her legs off’ because she was in so much pain. Patients should not be put in that position.
“I’m all for assisted dying, I wouldn’t have been for it if it wasn’t for my wife. I’ve seen it. I was in that room. I stayed with her. I was there for the last 31 days of her life, never left the room.
“I saw everything, I have to live with every single thing; everything I saw, I have to live with everything I heard. I have to live with the way she died.
“Everybody has the right to die the way they want to die, if there’s no chance of cure or recovery and no one has any doubt about that then they should have the right.”
Ed has also proposed a 10-point plan with regard to helping end-of-life care in Salford and the UK, which is attached below:
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