At 75, Arleen Reinsborough’s fear of nursing homes has her more determined than ever to seek assisted suicide.Of course, fear of long-term care doesn’t qualify her for medical assistance in dying.But Reinsborough is confident her unbearable pain will. Reinsborough has severe osteoarthritis, asthma, psoriasis so bad that her feet bleed whenever she stands up, and a damaged back and neck that linger from two past car accidents.But it’s her future that makes her despair the most.“It isn’t depression that makes me want to die, it’s the fear of living with inhumane, overcrowded conditions, loneliness and lack of hope,” she says, referring to life in a nursing home.“I’m trying to do all I can to prevent going to long-term care. I believe in quality of life, not quantity of life.”The homes she says she can afford “are worse than living on the street or living at all.”Hamilton has 1,717 people on a wait list for a room in a long-term care (LTC) facility, most of them for the cheapest, basic room which costs about $1,848 a month. A private room is $2,640 a month and semi-private runs about $2,228.The facilities are mandated to provide 24-hour nursing and personal care.Reinsborough accepts that, as a member of the baby boom generation (born 1945-1965), there will never be enough services because of the size of the aging demographic.She has a “small, wonderful” family with two adult children who are “stretched to the limit” trying to help care for her, all while working and caring for their own children — two of whom have medical issues, and another has a learning disability.“How could I ask more of them?”Reinsborough’s decision to apply for assisted dying was difficult.“I have chronic illnesses. The only way that ends is very badly,” she says.“I’m like a prisoner of a war camp I can never escape from, and every day I get a ...
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