'I'm a GP - after watching my dad suffer I know he'd want me to support the assisted dying bill'

A historic bid to is set to reach a milestone moment as it returns to the Commons for key votes.

The Terminally Ill Adults ( End of Live) Bill is being debated in Parliament. And if it goes through, it will give some terminally ill patients in England and Wales the option of assisted death.

It will allow terminally ill adults in England and Wales - with fewer than six months left to live - to apply for an assisted death.

After months of intense scrutiny, MPs will vote on key amendments on Friday before a crunch vote on the controversial issue next month. Campaigners for and against assisted dying are expected to be watching the debate from the public gallery of the .

One of the supporters is Dr Susie Caesar' whose father passed away in October 14th last year aged 87.

A GP for 30 years, Susi from Gloucestershire, has supported assisted dying ever since she went to medical school but her beliefs were further cemented after she lost her father Henning last year..

Here Susi talks about why she is in favour of the Assisted Dying Bill:

I have been in favour of assisted dying ever since I was on the medical ethics committee at Edinburgh University where I was in my final year as a medical student in 1989. And when we were talking about individual choice and dignity, at medical school.

My father who was German was an industrial chemist and my English mum Judi, a primary school teacher. They both brought up my brother and I talk to openly.

We talked about deep and meaningful things rather than making small talk around the dinner table. So we talked about money, sex, religion, politics and death - and I think that's, not always the case.

Sometimes the British are very inclined to shy away from things that might be slightly embarrassing or difficult or sad to talk about.

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My dad was not frightened of death. For as long as I can remember, he had made his peace with with being dead.

Dad was incredibly fit and well until October 2020, when he had a massive heart attack. And when he was admitted to hospital with a heart attack, he was in kidney failure, and they investigated and found out he had bladder cancer and that it had already killed one kidney.

And they couldn't do anything about his heart. Even doing angiogram and putting stents in because of his kidney. And they couldn’t do anything about bladder cancer. Dad had three separate ticking time bombs.

So basically the nurses told him go home and die. So my father had known he was dying for four years.

He also had prostate cancer back when he was in his late 60s, and he knew from the blood test that that was coming back as well. But it left him in this horrible position being terrified about losing his dignity.

Dad was a very proud man. The thing that was unbearable to him was the idea that he would lose control at the end of his life - of his bodily functions, of his mind, of his ability to be the person that he was.

He was ready to die in terms of having a will, and his affairs were always in order. Dad always told us that he loved us, and he was proud of us. So there wasn't any unfinished business.

But after his diagnosis, he spent four years absolutely terrified that at the end he would lose his dignity, he'd be incontinent. I'd have to wipe his bum and all of those things happened despite the best palliative care that we've got.

I don’t think, putting more money into palliative care would have given my father the death that he wanted, because he had, from a palliative care point of view, 'a brilliant death'.

He was in hospital for a week and then was able to come home to where he wanted to be with his family and his cat.

And after a week with a care package from the palliative care nurses, he died at home. That sounds like that's the best it gets in this country.

But the medication never quite kept up with his symptoms because he couldn't be given enough to ease suffering.

The district nurses were great about coming as soon as they could when we called them. .

But inevitably, until they arrived I could see that he was suffering.

Dad was a paid up member of Dignity in Dying for 25 years. And we talked a lot. It would not have been financially easy, but it would have been perfectly possible to go to Switzerland to go to

But the way my father's illness trajectory went, he was not ill enough to want to do that. He said it was too expensive and didn't want to spend the money, and he'd say 'I don't want you or your brother because my brother's a doctor too - to to get into trouble if you help me go and get assisted dying in Switzerland.' Also the practical implications of repatriating the body and what to do. He just didn't like the messiness of the practical side of it.

And by the time, he knew he was really ill enough to want it, he would not be fit enough to travel. So he felt very pleased when the was proposed. He was absolutely thrilled that it was debated in Parliament.

I know he just wanted me to speak out on behalf of all the people who deserve the comfort of choice The Assisted Dying Bill is not killing people. Something else is killing them. It's just about how they die and how peacefully they die.

My mother Judi feels exactly the same - she has supported assisted dying since she was twenty and old enough to know what it meant, and it is certainly something she would wish for herself.