Alison's story

For ten years...
alison davis

Alison Davis


I wanted to end it all
Now, I'm grateful I wasn't allowed to!

I understand completely the despair and blackness which, causes some disabled and ill people to feel suicidal because I once felt the same.

I am 50 and was born with severe spina bifida. I am completely dependent on my wheelchair for mobility. I am doubly incontinent and I have the lung condition emphysema, which often makes breathing very difficult. I also have osteoporosis (brittle bones), which has caused my spine to collapse, trapping nerves. This causes extreme pain, which is not always controlled, even with morphine. When the pain is at its worst I cannot move or speak. This can go on for hours, and there is no prospect of relief.

Some years ago a combination of physical and personal problems led me to feel that I couldn't go on living. For ten years I wanted to die and I made several serious attempts to kill myself.

I hoarded painkillers, and swallowed huge overdoses, washing them down with whatever alcohol I could lay my hands on. I slashed my wrists and was devastated when it didn't "work." I wanted death, and I knew exactly what I was doing.

Fortunately for me, I have friends who were brave enough to intervene, who called 999 and had me rushed to hospital. I was treated against my will more than once.

If euthanasia had been legal, I would certainly have requested it and I wouldn't be here now. In fact, under the rules that now apply in Holland, where euthanasia is legal, and under the supposed "strict rules" which the Voluntary Euthanasia Society proposes for a euthanasia law in the UK, I would qualify for "voluntary" killing.

I'll always be grateful to the friends who saved my life (though I wasn' t at the time). And I'm especially thankful there was no possibility of persuading my doctors to legally help me die.

Two things helped me realize that, in spite of my many disabilities, life can be sweet.

The first was my friends who refused to accept my view that my life had no value. They helped me re-establish a sense of my own infinite human value, a value which isn't diminished by being severely disabled and having to depend on others.

The second was that I went to India to visit two children I had been sponsoring through a project to help those with disabilities - who were to change my life completely.

Many are so disabled they can barely manage to crawl in the dust, and are unwanted and despised by their families and communities. But they mean the world to me.

The first time I visited the children, they called me 'Mummy.' They hugged me and loved me, and, as I was playing with them, I suddenly loved them all, overwhelmingly and fiercely, as if they really were mine. When we left, I said to my full-time care assistant: "I think I want to live." It was the first time I had thought that for over ten years.

With my assistant I set up Enable (Working in India), a charity working in this country to support 'my' children and I am now the proud 'mother' of over 400 children - with more on the way!

I am completely devoted to my children and have learnt their language, Telugu, so they can tell me all their problems and worries, their hopes and dreams, just as they would a real mother. I write to them in Telugu and love getting their letters. Visiting them every year is the highlight of my life.

These days I want to live for myself and for "my" children. I believe that both they and I and other disabled people have infinite value, regardless of our disabilities.

What I wish most for those who despair of life is that they could have the same sort of support that turned my life around and brought me from the depths of despair.

Sometimes it is said that disabled and ill people who request death are just exercising their right to choose; however the "choice" to die is not just wrong for the person so "choosing."

To say that death might be in their best interests is to say the same thing about me and my severely disabled children.

Once it is established that it is acceptable to cause the death of a disabled or ill person if s/he requests it, no disabled or ill person is safe.

I believe we deserve the same kind of help routinely given to those who do not have a physical condition but who feel suicidal.

To accept their request is in effect to say:

a) that severe disability is a fate worse than death,

and

b) that the best we can offer disabled terminally ill people is a hastened death.

Thanks to my children I no longer want to die. And neither do they!

Alison Davis March 2002. Revised September 2005.

To support Alison's charity or for further information contact: Enable, 35 Stileham Bank, Milborne St Andrew, Blandford Forum, Dorset DT11 0LE

Alison Davis is National Co-ordinator of No Less Human a group within The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children whose membership is open to disabled people, their relatives and carers.




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