Category: Radio 4
Date: 17.11.2005
Printable version
The Choice, 91Èȱ¬ Radio 4 - Tuesday 22 November at 9.00am
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Most people never think about the manner of their death. For the most part, good health is taken for granted and the pain and indignity of terminal illness is something which affects the lives of other people.
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But Reg Crew and his wife, Win, were those other people. The couple had been married for almost 50 years when Reg was diagnosed with Motor Neurone disease just after his 70th birthday in 1999. From that point, their comfortable lives were turned upside down.
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Says Win: "Reg's illness progressed frighteningly quickly. He lost the use of his hands and arms within weeks of being diagnosed. Then he couldn't stand up. Then the muscles went in his neck and he couldn't hold his head up either. It was like watching someone disintegrate before your eyes."
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Reg's anger at what was happening to him - and his refusal to accept it - meant he did not want to go on. As a talented sportsman who had enjoyed a range of activities from football to golf, watching life from the sidelines was particularly painful.
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He started to ask for a quick and painless end to this existence and for Win it meant a stark choice: should she help him end his life, risking criminal prosecution (in England, the penalty for assisted suicide is up to 14 years' imprisonment), or watch as her husband endured a prolonged death?
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Michael Buerk meets Win Crew in The Choice (91Èȱ¬ Radio 4, 9.00am, Tuesday 22 November) and talks to her about the life-changing decision which resulted in an extraordinary personal journey for her and her husband.
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Did she make the right choice? And what were the consequences for her and her family?
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The programme airs at a time when Lord Joffe's revised right to die bill has been tabled in the House of Lords and surveys into public opinion show increased support for a change in English law.
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This is the first dilemma in a brand new series of The Choice, where Michael Buerk talks to people who have faced a life-changing decision - the kind of choice which irrevocably alters the lives of those making them - and the consequences, both good and bad, of that decision.
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Future guest contributors include British novelist David Morley, former lifer John Hirst and ballet dancer Darcey Bussell.
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A 91Èȱ¬ Manchester Production.
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