Belgium - Two best friends from Belgium, Pegie Liekens, 44, and Nancy Vermeulen, 43, want to end their own lives via euthanasia, even as their conditions are non-life threatening and their doctors are against it.
Liekens, a mother of a 17-year-old son, suffered serious complications from anti-obesity surgery and can now only consume liquids and soft foods. She has anaemia and suffers from herniated disc in her back. Miss Vermeulen, on her part, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), a condition that leaves her exhausted for months on end.
They explain the want to end things before it gets "much worse," although their doctors advise to wait a couple of years to see what would happen and not to give up hope on contemporary medical advances.
The two friends known each other for 20 years. Both women have elderly parents, and Miss Liekens has a son - she wants to wait until her son has finished college before taking her own life.
Describing her frustration with her condition, Miss Liekens said: "I'm fed up with the food. I want meat and fish. I don't want to be an old lady unable to drink a glass of champagne or eat a good meal."
Miss Vermeulen said: "I try to enjoy life. Some days it works, some days it doesn't. But if I don't want to do it any more, I stop. I pull out the plug."
"When the point comes that you cannot take it any more, you don't think, 'My God, how am I going to be here in pain?' If you want to get out, it can stop," they say.
Euthanasia is legal in Belgium, but only so long as the patient is in a "futile medical condition of constant and unbearable physical or mental suffering that cannot be alleviated". Lawmakers recently amended it to go even further and allow children and Alzheimer’s sufferers to be euthanised.
Source: Dailymail
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