Esther Rantzen says family are in difficult position as she joins Dignitas
Dame Esther Rantzen reveals how long she has left to live
Dame Esther Rantzen has announced that she has joined assisted dying group, Dignitas, as she doesn’t want her family’s final memories of her to be “painful”. The journalist, 83, is battling stage four lung cancer and was told by her oncologist that she will die “sometime in the next 10 years”.
Sharing her decision on BBC’s The Today Podcast, the mother-of-three told hosts Nick Robinson and Amol Rajan: “I have joined Dignitas. I have in my brain thought, well, if the next scan says nothing’s working I might buzz off to Zurich.
“But, you know, it puts my family and friends in a difficult position because they would want to go with me. And that means that the police might prosecute them.”
Esther added that if she were the prime minister, she would call for a free vote on assisted dying, proclaiming: “We’ve got to do something. At the moment, it’s not really working is it?”
As for how her family have taken her decision to join Dignitas, the That’s Life! presenter said that they have accepted that it’s her “choice”.
READ MORE: Esther Rantzen hands over the reins of her beloved Childline to daughter Rebecca
She continued: “I explained to them that actually, I don’t want their last memories of me to be painful because if you watch someone you love having a bad death, that memory obliterates all the happy times and I don’t want that to happen. I don’t want to be that sort of victim in their lives.”
Esther’s comments are a further endorsement of the Express’s Give Us Our Last Rights Campaign which strives to change the law on assisted dying.
Earlier this month, Esther quit Childline after working at the charity for 37 years. Her health struggles forced her to step back as president of the youth counselling service and hand over the reigns to her daughter Rebecca Wilcox, 43.
Discussing her decision to step down, Dame Esther told The Express: “ChildLine has always had a very special place in my heart ever since we launched in 1986. But I have been concerned I have not been able recently to listen to children, meet staff and volunteers and spread awareness of our crucial lifeline the way I used to, due to my own health issues.
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“Rebecca and I both jumped at the idea, suggested by the NSPCC, that she should take on the role because she has known, respected and cared about Childline almost all her life.”
After going public with her diagnosis in May, Esther said her illness had forced her to “prioritise” her time after her doctor told her she had no more than 10 years left to live.
Speaking to The One Show’s Alex Jones from her home in June, the TV legend explained: “I did say to my oncologist, ‘When am I going to die?’ And he said, ‘Sometime in the next 10 years. But how soon, how late I do not know’.
“It does concentrate your mind to be told you’ve got to stage 4 lung cancer. You do think, ‘Well, wait a minute. I’ve got less time than maybe I had assumed so you prioritise’. Because as much as I love it and as much as I respect people who die working, for me I didn’t want to die working.”
The full interview with Dame Esther Rantzen on The Today Podcast is available on BBC Sounds.
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