A woman from Canada with severe ME has been approved for MAiD – but she wants to live

[Mij]

I remember reading her story on X. She has recently started a petition on her GoFundME begging for financial support to pay for her supplements. There is no mention of being approved for MAiD.

After decades battling severe ME/CFS and systemic lack of support, Marcia Doherty – known online as “Madeline” – is going fully public in a desperate bid to secure her survival and fight for change. It comes amid her being approved for assisted suicide in Canada – something she doesn’t actually want at all.
LINK

 

[Ash]

A very good article @Mij thanks for sharing.

Stark how no one you could ask in authority in Canada can possibly come up with any way at all to help you live. But they will admit that they’ve managed to make life so totally unbearable for you that it’s probably best they just kill you now. For your own good.

 

[CorAnd]

I find this deeply disturbing.

There was a case in Sweden last year where a woman with ME/CFS took her own life, because she kept being denied sickness benefits and disability. After fighting the system for many years, she hired a lawyer to help her, but it was too late… she could not take it anymore. She had a teenage daughter, and no money. Her story touched me deeply and I think about her often.


This disease, in its severe form, makes life unbearable. If you add that huge disease burden to complete lack of support from doctors and zero financial aid in the form of sickness benefits or disability, life becomes impossible.


I always believed every human being is valuable and that democracy was built on this principle. Since having ME/CFS I realized that’s not the case. If you have ME/CFS you are nothing in the eyes of society: doctors don’t believe you, insurance fails you, it’s better all around if you just die and stop being a nuissance.

It’s a grim reality. It will not change until the day we can prove with the help of some objective test that we are ill.

 

[Yann04]

I always believed every human being is valuable and that democracy was built on this principle. Since having ME/CFS I realized that’s not the case. If you have ME/CFS you are nothing in the eyes of society: doctors don’t believe you, insurance fails you, it’s better all around if you just die and stop being a nuissance.

Yes. I was enchanted by a privileged position in society until getting severe ME led to a crumbling house of cards and disenchantment.

The more I learn, the more the case of ME doesn’t seem particularly rare, systemic injustices are common, they just aren’t very well known.

 

[Sean]

This disease, in its severe form, makes life unbearable. If you add that huge disease burden to complete lack of support from doctors and zero financial aid in the form of sickness benefits or disability, life becomes impossible.

I'd go further and say they are not only passively failing to deliver the necessary support, they are actively hostile to doing so and working hard to continue denying it all to us.

Not all of them, of course. There are always good people in any broken system or institution trying to get it back on track, they are our allies and deserve our recognition and support. But they, like us, are up against some ferocious and ruthless resistance from the bad faith players.