Terminal Alberta senior chooses MAID in memory of late wife: ‘I have no regrets’
Alexander Hart Tsang knows his time is coming to an end.“I can feel it in my body. Its deteriorating,” the 78-year-old Edmonton senior said.“I know my whole body — inside — is shutting down.”Over the last 16 years, he’s battled liver cancer.Alexander has undergone radiation, chemotherapy, immunotherapy and other medical procedures — but nothing cured him.“I didn’t get cancer overnight.
I knew I had something that’s really going to kill me someday,” he said.In November, his doctor at the Cross Cancer Institute laid out the grim, but not surprising, news.“She said ‘That’s it. You’ve done whatever there is to be done and you’d be lucky to be alive by July on your birthday.'”Tsang spent his life serving in the Canadian military, serving on NATO missions that took him all across the globe to countries like Germany, Sudan, Bosnia and Ethiopia.
He spent time as a military police officer tracking down war crimes criminals.After 42 years serving his country — Alexander has seen more than his share of death.But it’s his wife Patricia’s gut-wrenching battle with lung cancer that shaped his thoughts next.“She was a social worker — a very strong-willed woman. All of a sudden she was curled up like a baby,” he recalled.Alexander decided to ask his doctor about medical assistance in dying — something that wasn’t available to his wife.“I didn’t want to die in a hospital.
My wife died in a hospital six years ago and I saw the indignity patients are exposed to during the terminal stages.”“I said ‘I don’t want to be like that.’ You go through all kinds of medical treatments — for what? Just to prolong your life a month, two months maybe… what is the point?“That helped me make my mind that it doesn’t have to be like this. You can have a
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