Why I've promised to help my beautiful daughter take her own life after she was struck by terminal illness



A mother's love: Debby Thornton, right, with her daughter Jennie who suffers from cystic fibrosis

Gazing down at my newborn daughter, I wanted to commit the moment to my memory for ever.

Her perfect rosebud lips, her tiny fingers curled around mine and her satin-soft skin all entranced me.

I was overcome with a rush of love so powerful I knew I would lay down my life for Jennie.

As a mother, it’s your greatest privilege to bring your children into the world. From the moment they are born, your instinct is to shield them from anything that would hurt them. The urge is to nurture, cherish and protect.

Yet, hard as it is to admit, I may soon find myself doing the one thing that goes against every maternal instinct.

I have agreed to help my beautiful 33-year-old daughter end her life.

When Jennie - and only Jennie - decides that her life has become intolerable, I have promised that I will help her travel to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland so she can die.

If needs be, I am prepared to sell my house and do whatever it takes to help her on her final journey.

These are admissions that will shock and anger many. I know there are those who will never agree with what I have promised to do.

But as a mother who has witnessed decades of her child’s suffering, I know with complete conviction that I am doing the right thing.

I cannot see her clinging to a life that has no quality, trapped inside her failing body.

For though Jennie was an angelic baby, who rarely cried or made a fuss, very quickly it became apparent she had serious health problems.

She was born at Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow, Essex, but within days I knew something was wrong. Despite getting plenty of milk, she failed to thrive and didn’t put on weight.

When she was six weeks old, after a battery of tests, a consultant told me: ‘I’m sorry, but your daughter has cystic fibrosis. She won’t see her 15th birthday.’

Proud: Debby beams at the camera as she holds Jennie - an 'angelic baby who rarely cried or made a fuss'

Cystic fibrosis is a genetic degenerative disease that causes the body to produce a thick mucus that affects the lungs or digestive system.

Those who have it eventually die from lung collapse or organ failure. The news swamped me. I was a young mother - just 18. Even worse, I was a single mum, as Jennie’s father had left me. It was too much to bear and I developed post-natal depression.

I cried every day for two years, but then something extraordinary happened. Jennie rescued me.

From a sick baby, she turned into the most beautiful toddler, tottering around on chubby legs with a halo of blonde curls cascading around her apple cheeks.



I realised I could either let her grow up with a wreck of a mother or we could live every day as if it was her last.

'I could either let her grow up with a wreck of a mother, or we could live every day as if it was her last'





It was a powerful realisation and marked the beginning of my odyssey to cherish my daughter.

Even after I embarked on a new relationship and had three more children - Sebastian, now 28, Maddie, 25, and Daisy, 22 - my bond with Jennie was unique.



I never rushed her through life. I wanted to be truly immersed in every moment with her, whether it was toddling through the park to feed the ducks or snuggling on the settee.



I also spoke candidly to her about her condition and explained as best as I could that she was ill and would always need to go to hospital.

Jennie was as bright as a button and was just nine when she turned to me and told me she knew she was going to die young from cystic fibrosis. I could not disagree: I simply was unable to lie to her.

Then she said something that made me realise what a truly courageous soul she is: ‘Don’t feel guilty, Mum.’

Unique bond: Debby, pictured with a young Jennie, had three more children - Sebastian, Maddie and Daisy

For me, guilt was all-pervading. As I had told Jennie, in as simple a way as I could manage, I am a carrier of cystic fibrosis and, by a horrible coincidence, her father was, too.

I gave her this disease. The feeling that I am responsible for her pain was, and still remains, crippling.

People have cystic fibrosis because a faulty gene is passed from the parents to the child.

One in 25 people carry the gene. If both parents have the gene, there is a 25 per cent chance the child will have cystic fibrosis.

Jennie was one of the unlucky ones who developed the disease. Her three siblings have a different father and he does not carry the gene.

Having to face their own mortality is something no child should be forced to do. Jennie was just 11 when she wrote her first will.

On a crumpled piece of paper she wrote in her childish hand that she wished to be cremated, not buried; she wanted to be wearing her favourite trainers; and that she absolutely had to have her treasured pink blanket with her.



Honesty: Debby has always spoken candidly to her daughter about her terminal illness



She had a terrible fear that if she couldn’t sleep without it, how on earth would she rest in peace if her blanket wasn’t near?

Her pragmatic approach to dealing with an incurable disease broke my heart.

When she reached 15, the birthday that doctors told me she would never see, we blew out the candles on her cake and celebrated.

In her late teens I sensed a change in Jennie. It was as if she wanted to hit fast-forward on her life.

I didn’t sit in judgment when she started to live hard: travelling, partying and getting married aged just 18. Unsurprisingly, the marriage fell apart after two and a half years.

Her wildness continued, a life played out at top speed. She married again at 25, to a man I disliked.



' Having to face their own mortality is something no child should be forced to do'

While I refused to attend the wedding, I was certainly there to care for her when the marriage broke up after six months.

I prefer not to focus on these parts of my daughter’s life. Every child is entitled to make mistakes growing up, especially those who know that their life will not be long.



Instead, I think of the many precious times we have had together. Curled up on the sofa watching black-and-white films, long walks in the fields near my home in Buckinghamshire and giggling over endless lunches.

Thanks to advances in the treatment of cystic fibrosis, life expectancy has risen. So when Jennie turned 30, we celebrated with a ‘Double your sell-by date’ birthday party.

We dressed up, had all her friends round and, at the end of the night, Jennie grabbed the microphone and announced: ‘I want the last dance with my mother.’

We danced in each other’s arms to Bette Midler’s The Wind Beneath My Wings. I wept. My daughter, my hero.

Plea: Debby has agreed to help Jennie end her life at the Dignitas clinic, pictured, in Switzerland

But while there has always been plenty of laughter and joy, I know just what a battle Jennie’s life has been.

Over the years, I have seen her admitted repeatedly to hospital to deal with lung infections, including pneumonia.

All too often, I’ve witnessed her pain of injecting herself with cocktails of medication and the daily physiotherapy she must undergo to clear her lungs.

To this day, I am haunted by the memory of pinning down her tiny child’s body so doctors could insert a line into her vein to administer drugs.

I still hear the rasp of her hollow breaths when she has been seriously ill. I would do anything to swap places with her.

Three years ago, we were driving home from a hospital appointment where Jennie had been surrounded by patients gravely ill with cystic fibrosis. It proved to be a catalyst for what came next.

‘I’d like a wicker coffin when I die, Mum,’ she remarked.

Pain: Debby says she would do anything to swap places with her terminally ill daughter

I was still digesting this when she turned to me and said, with typical bluntness: ‘If I have no quality of life when I turn 40, I would like to go to a Dignitas clinic and end my life. Will you help me, Mum?’

Will you help me, Mum? Five simple words with endless moral, ethical, not to mention legal, implications.



Switzerland permits assisted suicide in specific circumstances and Dignitas is the only facility in the country to accept foreigners. However, here in Britain it remains illegal.



The Suicide Act of 1961 makes anyone who aids and abets the suicide of another person liable to imprisonment for a maximum of 14 years.

The legal implications aside, my first thought was that of a mother: ‘I can’t do that.’

And then my rational mind took over. Jennie’s plea wasn’t the ramblings of an over-emotional or frightened young mind.

This was a calm, measured and thought-out question by a woman whose daily life from infancy has been dominated by managing a dreadful disease.

As we drove on, my hands gripped the steering wheel and I knew with certainty that there was only one suitable response I could give as a loving parent. ‘Yes. When that time comes, I will help.’

‘But what if I can’t afford it, Mum?’ she replied.

Without hesitation, I told her that I will do anything within my power, sell my house if needs be, to help end her suffering if it has become intolerable.

I know my decision might split opinion, but to me the issue is simple.

No mother wants to see her child suffer in unimaginable pain and I am no different. The last thing I want is to lose her, but if the end is near and she is suffering needlessly, then I will do anything to help. Even if that means helping to hasten her death.

And I would be failing her as a mother if I wasn’t by her side in those moments.

This decision is all hers, though, and she has the full backing of her brother and sisters.



Jennie worries how other cystic fibrosis sufferers will perceive her request. This is her unique response to this disease and she knows other people living with it won’t agree with her decision.

' No mother wants to see her child suffer in unimaginable pain and I am no different'

But after a life with no control over her health, she would at least like control over the end. Is that not her right? She owns her life and she owns the right to end that life when she has suffered enough.

Jennie has shared her deepest fears with me. She has seen people in the final stages of their battle with the disease, of men and women covered in tubes, too weak to be fed, other patients hallucinating from too much morphine and one poor woman haemorrhaging from the mouth.

She does not wish to die confined to a hospital bed and in prolonged pain.

I think Jennie has felt far more at peace since I pledged to help her. Her only fear is that her illness will decline so fast that it will make it impossible for her to travel to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland.

There is no set pattern or course for cystic fibrosis and most sufferers now live until 40, but we have both sensed a decline in her condition since she hit her 30s.

She’s been hospitalised twice with pneumonia this year alone. During one infection, her lung capacity dropped to 30 per cent, which is dangerously low.

She needs to take 15 pills and use two inhalers a day, as well as the physiotherapy regime. Though she lives independently in a flat near my home, we simply don’t know how long that will last.

Experience: Debby says she has witnessed Jennie's pain of injecting herself with cocktails of medication

As spring turned to summer this year, I sensed a shift in her attitude, as if she was determined to eke as much fun and happiness from life while she still could. I was honoured to be along for the ride.

Spontaneous Sunday trips, summer festivals lying on picnic blankets letting the sunshine soak deep into our skin as we sipped chilled rose wine, giggling helplessly over silly jokes, clothes shopping.

Over the long, hot summer, I amassed as many treasured memories of my eldest daughter as I possibly could.

Now those carefree and hedonistic times are slipping away and the reality of cystic fibrosis is kicking in.

Our times together are ruled by the constraints of her health. Jennie wants to go Christmas shopping, but I know a whole afternoon of walking will be too much for her, so I have hired a wheelchair. We adapt and we overcome, for now.

Jennie has the sort of looks that turn heads in the street. It’s the most cruel of paradoxes that her sleek blonde hair, dewy skin and long, honey-coloured limbs radiate health.

'I f the end is near and she is suffering needlessly, then I will do anything to help'

I see the raised eyebrows of strangers when she parks her car, complete with blue badge, in the disabled bay outside the supermarket.

I want to scream at the injustice of a disease that slowly robs sufferers of the ability to breathe and yet leaves them looking so vital.

Doctors can’t tell me how long she has left, but I fear we are beginning to live on borrowed time.

The other day I was walking across the fields near my home and I called her on my mobile phone, instinctively feeling that something was wrong.

She was in the middle of a terrible coughing fit. ‘Oh Jennie,’ I gasped. ‘You’re coughing.’

‘I’m dying, Mum,’ she replied simply. ‘This is the beginning.’

And so begins a new phase of our journey together. I am determined to follow her and support her wherever that journey may take us.

If that means helping her to end her life in a controlled and dignified way, at a time and place of her choosing, then so be it.

I owe my daughter that much.

For more information on cystic fibrosis, visit www.cysticfibrosis.org.uk or call the CF Trust Helpline on 0300 373 1000.