{"id":303048,"date":"2023-12-08T14:40:04","date_gmt":"2023-12-08T20:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=303048"},"modified":"2023-12-08T00:47:57","modified_gmt":"2023-12-08T06:47:57","slug":"canadian-woman-cancer-offered-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/canadian-woman-cancer-offered-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian woman diagnosed with cancer was offered death instead of treatment"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As assisted suicide and euthanasia grow more pervasive in Canada, people are suffering more \u2014 with one woman’s cancer horror story as the latest example.<\/p>\n

Allison Ducluzeau spoke to Global News<\/a> about her experience, in which she sought treatment for cancer and was told by her doctors that treatment wasn’t worth it. When she originally began having abdominal pain, she said it took her a long time to even be seen for diagnostic tests.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn November, I ended up at emergency because the pain was just getting progressively worse,\u201d she said. \u201cI didn\u2019t get to sleep one night and I woke up my now husband and said, I think we better go to emergency. So we did. And when I was there, I got a CT scan or I was booked for one the next day and the results of the CT scan indicated it looked like it might be something called peritoneal carcinomatosis, which is abdominal cancer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eventually, she was able to get a biopsy, in which the cancer diagnosis was confirmed: stage 4 peritoneal carcinomatosis.<\/p>\n

Ducluzeau was referred to the BC Cancer Agency, and had already been given a treatment plan by her family doctor, who suggested HIPEC, high doses of chemotherapy delivered into the abdomen to kill the cancer cells. But the surgeon at BC Cancer Center said that because her prognosis was not good, it wasn’t even worth trying \u2014 and recommended Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID), Canada’s euthanasia program, instead.<\/p>\n

\u201cChemotherapy is not very effective with this type of cancer,\u201d Ducluzeau said the surgeon told her. \u201cIt only works in about 50 per cent of the cases to slow it down. And you have a life span of what looks like to be two months to two years. And I suggest you talk to your family, get your affairs in order, talk to them about your wishes, which was indicating, you know, whether you want to have medically assisted dying or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

After telling her devastated children the news, Ducluzeau vowed to fight, consulting oncologists in Taiwan and Maryland. By the time she heard back from an oncologist in Canada, she’d already begun receiving treatment in the United States.<\/p>\n