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Even if Winnipeg man's mother wanted to die, she didn't need to do it on the floor: Experts

Ron Siwicki (left) and late mother Betty. Photos from Ron Siwicki's Facebook page and YouTube account.

If you read just the headline on the story about charges against Winnipeg musician Ron Siwicki for leaving his mother to die on the floor of their home after lying there for up to three weeks you can’t help but be shocked and angry.

It’s a clear case of elder abuse, the headline suggests, and certainly the authorities think so. They’ve charged the 62-year-old guitarist with criminal negligence causing death and failure to provide the necessities of life to his 89-year-old mom.

But dig a little deeper and the story changes to perhaps something even more tragic, especially in a rapidly aging society like ours. It’s perhaps an object lesson to the rest of us who are unwilling to discuss candidly the end of life.

According to the Winnipeg Free Press, Siwicki was arrested Dec. 17. He was held in custody until friends from Winnipeg’s music community this week raised money to get him released on bail. He is to undergo a psychiatric assessment and abide by strict conditions while free.

Most details of the case remain under a publication ban but it’s alleged that Siwicki’s mother, Betty, stumbled and fell in the home the two shared sometime in late November.

Siwicki’s lawyers say the elderly woman, who suffered from dementia and other health problems, allegedly expressed a wish to die rather than be taken to hospital and told her son not to call for help. Complying with her request, he tried to make her comfortable. He covered her with a blanket and gave her water and liquid food supplements until she passed away.


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Without all the facts, we can’t say whether this is case of callous indifference to someone’s suffering or a misjudgment brought on by the stress and burnout of looking after an ailing family member. Friends say Siwicki is a gentle man who genuinely cared for his mother.

A neighbour told the Winnipeg Free Press that he “was always very nice with her. He took her places, and they went to the casino together.”

Death on floor completely unnecessary

Whatever the outcome, Betty Siwicki’s slow, difficult death was completely unnecessary, say those who work with the elderly and the dying. She had options beyond spending her final days on the floor of her home.

“I would call it a tragedy of misunderstanding and misinformation,” Pat Irwin, president of ElderCareCanada, a consulting service that helps children of aging parents, told Yahoo Canada News.

“I don’t think it’s elder abuse. There’s an awful lot we don’t know. But reading between the lines, it seems to me to be a failure of the end-of-life policy being understood in this country.”

In Canada, only Quebec has dying-with-dignity legislation, introduced by the previous Parti Quebecois government but passed with bipartisan support last summer by the governing Liberals. Its most contentious element is the right to request doctor-assisted death but it also spells out the role of palliative care.

Even without that, Canadians have the right to die on their own terms and to refuse medical treatment, added Wanda Morris, chief executive of Dying with Dignity, which among other things advocates for right-to-die legislation.

"If the mother’s spirit was not to receive care, if that was the intent not to receive treatment, she has that right," Morris said in an interview.

But that doesn’t mean she had to lie on the floor, perhaps imploring her son not to call 911, she said. She could have been taken to hospital and received palliative care.

“The crux of this situation is did the mom and did Ron know she could die peacefully?” asked Morris. ”She could refuse all further treatment, but she could do it in comfort of a hospital bed with pain control, as opposed to the only way she could get her wish was by staying on the floor.”

It seems apparent, Irwin and Morris agreed, that Siwicki and his mother didn’t know the rights and procedures available to them to ensure a dignified death.

"I think that’s at the core of this case and I think that lack of knowledge is what led to this," said Morris.

You don’t have to be old to worry you’ll spend your last days in a sterile hospital room hooked up to machines keeping you alive. Betty Siwicki, and perhaps her son, may have nurtured a fear that calling an ambulance would have put her in hospital or nursing home against her will.

"They don’t understand there is an alternative and that’s where society’s kind of let people down, because they haven’t made it clear that you can seek help, you can seek palliative care and that you have options," said Irwin.

Allowed to refuse life-saving treatment

All provinces and territories have legislation enabling a person to spell out their wishes about receiving medical treatment and legally designate a family member to ensure those wishes are carried out. In Manitoba, it’s the Health Care Directive, which includes a provision that allows you to appoint a proxy if you’re unable to speak for yourself.

Whether Betty Siwicki or her son were aware of the law is unclear. If they were, it’s possible she did not want to hand over that power, said Irwin.

With such a directive, she said, Siwicki could have called 911 and emergency responders would have been required to comply with her wishes.

"They can advise you to go to hospital to seek help. You can refuse," she said. “But what that would have done is gotten Mr. Siwicki off the hook because someone would have seen her and given her professional advice and heard her refuse it."

We are, as a culture, uneasy talking about how we want the final days of our lives to go. That uneasiness isolates those who must face the end alone. Its seen in cases of elderly couples, one of whom is suffering, who opt to commit suicide together, said Irwin.

“I wish we could all have this conversation without it being judgmental and without fear,” said Irwin. “Because it doesn’t jinx things to talk about death. It doesn’t mean you’re inviting death.

"What it means is [that] that person is allowed to have a good death and not take their children and/or caregivers down with them, so to speak.”

Irwin also points the finger at doctors, who generally won’t broach the option of palliative care unless a patient or family mentions it.

“If you don’t ask for it, it’s not usually suggested,” she said. “Doctors aren’t comfortable.

"We haven’t come to terms with death in this society, have we? We don’t know how to have the conversations. We don’t know how to let it happen and we try to be, I think, like this poor Mr. Siwicki, who’s trying to please everybody and he winds up in the slammer.”