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EDMONTON — At 87, Lochan Bakshi's sharp mind has decided when to free his failing body.

When he dies — sooner rather than later, he plans — he wants his body to be burned, the ashes mixed with garden soil and used to plant a rose bush. When the flower buds, he imagines his grandsons exclaiming, "'Grandpa has come to life.' That is my reincarnation. What else?"

The retired biology professor has thought hard about death and about the way he wants it to arrive. After all, he's seen men like himself hunched over in chairs in long-term-care centres, their minds absent, unaware there hasn't been a visitor for years.

His cousin had a massive stroke that stole his memory and his mind. He would sit in his own mire until the next nursing visit, bathed by his caring wife. "It struck me: why should he be like this? Why not just finish it? He's just a vegetable," Bakshi said to her. "'You mean kill my husband? I can't kill him,'" she responded.

"Nobody should be in that situation," Bakshi says, his cheeks apple-flushed, his sharp eyes framed with straying silver eyebrows and wire-rimmed bifocals. "I am convinced that I don't want to be like that."

So in about two months, give or take, he'll refuse his thrice-weekly dialysis treatments, he says, then wait seven to 10 days for his kidneys and the rest of his body to fail. He'd prefer an injection to put him to sleep peacefully and quickly like his beloved cat Spooky, whose kidneys failed, too, leaving him yowling in pain through the night before Bakshi took him to the vet. One tiny needle in Spooky's paw and two seconds later, he was dead.

"So you see, we removed his pain so quickly," Bakshi said. "How can we not do the same for humans?"

Bakshi wants to open the debate on euthanasia in Alberta following a landmark report released last month in Quebec that suggested the province legalize doctor-assisted euthanasia in "exceptional circumstances" for those who are terminally ill.

The Dying with Dignity Commission, made up of nine members from all political parties, studied the issue for two years before rejecting the idea of legalizing assisted suicide — performed by a family member — but recommending people should be able to seek aid to die in a medical environment.

"Some sufferings can't be relieved satisfactorily and the seriously ill who want to put an end to their sufferings (that) they deem senseless, come up against a refusal that isn't in line with Quebec's values of compassion and solidarity," reads the report, released March 21.

But the provinces can do little when the federal criminal code makes it illegal to counsel, aid or abet someone to commit suicide, says Erin Nelson, a professor in the University of Alberta's law faculty who specializes in health-care ethics.

Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland, the Netherlands and Belgium, and the American states of Oregon and Washington, as long as strict medical protocols are followed. That's not the case in most countries, including Canada.

Nelson agrees with Joe Arvay, a lawyer in Victoria, who says there are discrepancies in Canada's stance on the right to die with dignity.

"If you have a need for ongoing treatment, you can refuse it and, if the treatment is what's maintaining your life, then, technically, I suppose you have a right to die," Nelson said, summing up a recent public talk at the U of A made by Arvay, who is working with the B.C. Civil Liberties Association and a plaintiff to decriminalize assisted suicide. "You can say, 'I don't want mechanical ventilation, I don't want dialysis. I don't want that antibiotic, I don't want artificial hydration and nutrition.'"

But if you don't need life-sustaining treatment, you can't ask for assistance to die. "That kind of inconsistency," said Nelson, "that's where there needs to be some real focused public discussion.

"I think it's going to become inevitable that more and more people will wish to be able to make decisions like this, about dying with dignity as they perceive it, if their life is no longer what they wish to live."

Nelson said the government should start the conversation, rather than leave it to individuals and families. "One of the arguments that Joe Arvay made is, it's unfair to burden those people with that responsibility. It's not just an individual thing. It actually is a bit of a societal discussion that needs to take place."

But governments are unlikely to to take the lead, he says. "There's just not a lot of political gain to be made by getting into this." If governments did instigate public debate on euthanasia, they would be inevitably and unfairly accused of trying to save health dollars by letting people die, says Nelson.

That, even though an Angus Reid poll conducted in late 2010 found 63 per cent of Canadians generally support euthanasia. It goes up to 78 per cent in Quebec. In Alberta, support dips to 48 per cent.

Bakshi said he easily can reconcile his belief system with the right to die through injection. He doesn't like the idea of refusing dialysis, then awaiting death for one week while on pain killers.

"I absolutely believe that God does not want you to be miserable and, if that is so, why do we keep hanging on to the little thread of life at the very end?" Bakshi said. "God did not want us to suffer and I'm helping God."

At that, he chuckles. He's at peace with death. He's had important conversations about it with his three sons, ages 50, 59 and 61, and has formed a close friendship with his ex-wife, following 20 years of silence. He just wants to finish some academic work on wildflowers, following a teaching career at Athabasca University.

In January, he had two, maybe three, mini-strokes that left him chronically tired. Before that, he drove himself everywhere and lived independently in a condo, with only a housekeeper to help with chores.

For the last several weeks, Bakshi has been living at the Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital, waiting for a space in an assisted-living facility, where he will require help going to bed and putting on his shoes. Bakshi shuffles along with a walker, now, his feet in constant pain from diabetic sores. He rues the day when he might have to consider amputation. He is deaf in his left ear and 60 per cent in his right. Then there's the possible blindness and other complications of Type 2 diabetes.

"I will take myself off dialysis when I cannot stand my present life anymore, when the pain in my feet increases," Bakshi said. For others, he would like a committee created to make right-to-die decisions, especially for patients with dementia and no family.

"Being a biologist and having dissected animals and cut up plants, and simply being an ecologist tells me I have got to go someday," he said. "My body is telling me, you have done enough."

"When I sit down, I say, 'What am I doing here?'" he said. "You have lived a good life; why should you have a terrible death?"

Edmonton Journal

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