British mum explains decision to end life at clinic in Switzerland - here's why
Warning: This article contains discussion of suicide which some readers may find distressing.
A perfectly healthy British mum has expressed her wishes to end her life via assisted dying.
Wendy Duffy, 56, flew to Switzerland earlier this week, where a £10k 'suicide clinic' is located, with a one-way ticket.
According to the ex-care worker, she's been making plans to end her own life for over a year - she's even planned the song that'll play when she takes her final breath.
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"You can choose whatever song you want," Duffy told The Mail. "I'm going to go out to Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars singing 'Die With A Smile'."
She even joked: "You’ll never be able to hear that song now without thinking of me, will you?"
The Swiss government has allowed doctors to assist severely ill people in ending their lives with medication for several years as part of a practice defined in law as abiding by a patient's 'right to die'.
The most popular facility for this practice is Dignitas, where staff usually charge an average of £10,000 to £15,000 for foreign nationals - a fee that includes travel, administration and medical fees.
Duffy is physically fit and healthy, however, meaning she doesn't quality for treatment here.
But since 2022, she's battled emotional agony every day, which first kicked in following the death of her only son.
Marcus Duffy was just 23 when he passed away. He'd been hungover, eating a sandwich on the sofa, but had fallen asleep, choking on a cherry tomato.
His mother had attempted to save his wife with CPR before he was rushed to the hospital.
Five days later, Duffy made the difficult decision to switch off Marcus' life support.
In the years since, his mother has relied on both therapy and antidepressants in a bid to ease her heartache, being unable to cope with her loss.
"In the funeral home, I went in every day, and just sat with him, playing through his Spotify list," Duffy confessed. "I broke when I saw him in there. My boy, on a metal table. You can't come back from that, you know.
"That's when I died too, inside. I'm not the same person now as I was. I used to feel things. I don't care about anything any more."
Feeling she can't go on without Marcus, Duffy is now hoping staff at Pegasos, an institute in Switzerland with more liberal assisted dying practices, will help her to end her own life.
Patients are usually required to supply a lengthy evaluation of a written request, as well as a vast amount of medical information. They must also prove their mental competency and that they're not being pressured into the decision during face-to-face meetings with doctors.
The procedure would see Duffy administering a lethal medication herself by turning a dial.
"Then – ding, ding, ding – within a minute, you are in a coma," she told the publication. "And a minute after that, you are gone."
Apparently, Duffy's family are all in the loop with her controversial decision.
"Pegasos have been in touch with them," she explained. "I will call them when I get to Switzerland. It will be a hard call where I’ll say goodbye and thank them. But they will get it. They know.
"Honestly, 100%, they know that I’m not happy, that I don’t want to be here."
The facility's founder, Ruedi Habegger, confirmed earlier this week that Duffy had passed her final psychiatric assessment.
"Wendy is very decided. I saw her at her hotel today, I had a long talk with her and with the psychiatrist that is going to see her a second time before the VAD [voluntary assisted death]," he claimed.
"He is very confident that we are doing the right thing, letting her go, that we should not stand in her way. She is absolutely not in a depressive state. I'm very experienced in this field. There are no worries with Wendy, none at all."
If you’ve been affected by any of these issues and want to speak to someone in confidence, please don’t suffer alone. Call Samaritans for free on their anonymous 24-hour phone line on 116 123 or contact Harmless by visiting their website https://harmless.org.uk.
Rhianna Benson