Mary Wilson was rapidly deteriorating with Alzheimer’s when she received a medically assisted death in 2017. The Alberta woman was still cognitively aware and could carry complex conversations, but those chats might take an hour and a half instead of the usual 15 minutes, says her son, Ken Campbell. She had also begun retreating from the world as the disease progressed: she put coffee cups in bathroom cabinets and spoons under pillows; she needed help getting dressed and had a loss of bladder control.
Wilson, an intellectual with three post-secondary degrees, stopped reading and started watching Disney musicals on repeat. “Talking to my mom was like watching a beginner driver parallel park,” Campbell says of her final days. Wilson hosted an intimate house party with family and friends before receiving MAID.
At the party she would smile and lean forward as if preparing to speak, but then lose her train of thought as everyone quieted to listen, saying only, “Nevermind,” Campbell says. Her window for eligibility to receive MAID appeared to be closing – once a person with an untreatable condition loses the mental capacity to consent, it’s illegal to provide them an assisted death. “Advanced requests were not available, and that was a big frustration for my mother,” says Campbell.
That is no longer the case in Quebec, where a person with a serious and incurable illness like Alzheimer’s can request MAID, months or years before their condition leaves them unable .