A 20-year-old Canadian who has decided to pursue medical care has revealed that he will need six organ transplants to survive, and even then he will have only a 50% chance of recovering.
Eric Coolam, a resident of Fort St. John in British Columbia, recently hosted a farewell barbecue to say goodbye to his friends and relatives.
Mr. Kulam decided to use the Canadian Medical Act for Dying (Maid), which will help end his life painlessly with medication administered by a doctor or nurse.
“There will be an end to the suffering. I suffer all day. “I’ve been in a room with four walls for a very long time and it’s just enough for me,” he told CJDC-TV.
Mr. Kulam spent most of his childhood taking abdominal pain medications to treat an unknown gastrointestinal disease. In the last two years, this condition has cost him his small intestine, leading to liver and kidney disease, chronic pain and countless infections.
Doctors have been unable to diagnose the condition, which has plagued him for nearly a decade, although he has visited seven different hospitals in Canada and consulted with specialists across the country.
His health deteriorated two years ago when doctors discovered an obstruction. He became so ill that he needed emergency surgery to remove part of his lower bowel.
Eric Kulam suffered a septic shock after his bowel ruptured
(GoFundMe)
He fell into septic shock after part of his bowel burst.
“I went to the emergency room and went to bed immediately that night [it] cracked and [I] I was in a coma, I don’t remember how long.
He said doctors still could not understand why his condition was deteriorating and he was sent from Fort St. John to Dawson Creek and then to several other hospitals before returning to Fort St. John.
He says doctors have finally told him that his only chance for recovery is to receive six different organ transplants, which he says have never been tried before.
He was also told that he had only a 50 percent chance of recovery, and it was this revelation that led him to ultimately choose death with medical help. But it was “difficult to tell everyone else” about his decision, he said.
Eric poses in hospital with a graduation hat. He graduated high school early and later pursued his goal of becoming a heavy mechanic, starting his apprenticeship from level 1 in college.
(GoFundMe)
“I thought about it for a while, I kind of took care of my family because I wasn’t in a good place. I knew that was what I wanted to do, “he said.
In one of his last public interviews, the 20-year-old said: “Sometimes I lie there at night and sometimes I get sad, but for the most part I wait for the day because I feel a lot of pain. time … I take a lot of medication just to feel comfortable for a few hours. ”
However, he has not yet set a date for the death with medical assistance. “I will go when I am ready. Not when I’m sick. It’s not when they take my medicine. That’s when I’m ready, “he said.
The federal law, Maid, was passed by the Canadian Parliament in June 2016 to allow eligible adults to request the procedure. A person must be over 18 years of age, have a “serious and incurable disease, illness or disability” and live with unbearable physical or psychological pain that medicine cannot alleviate in order to be considered.
The person is injected with a medicine under the supervision of nurses and doctors, which causes painless death, or is prescribed to take the medicine by mouth.
If you feel suffering and isolated or struggling to cope, the Samaritans offer support; you can talk to someone for free on the phone, confidentially, at 116 123 (UK and ROI), send an email to jo@samaritans.org or visit the Samaritans website to find details of the nearest branch.
If you live in the United States and you or someone you know needs mental health care right now, call the National Suicide Prevention Helpline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255). The hotline is a free, confidential crisis hotline that is available every 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
If you are in another country, you can go to www.befrienders.org to find a helpline near you.
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