Canadian woman told by doctors to consider assisted suicide after she was diagnosed with cancer

Allison Ducluzeau, a 57 year old mother from Canada, was advised by consultants to consider euthanasia after she was diagnosed with stage four abdominal cancer last year. Ducluzeau told Global News how she discovered she had cancer “I didn’t get to sleep one night and I woke up my now husband and said, I think we better go to emergency. So we did. And when I was there, I got a CT scan or I was booked for one the next day and the results of the CT scan indicated it looked like it might be something called peritoneal carcinomatosis, which is abdominal cancer.”  

Ducluzeau claimed that her family doctor had informed her that a treatment known as HIPEC—which entails injecting large amounts of chemotherapy into the abdomen in order to eradicate the cancer cells—is typically used for this kind of cancer. However, she claimed that she was informed she was not a candidate for surgery when she saw the consulting surgeon at the BC Cancer Agency in January.

According to Ducluzeau, the surgeon told her that “chemotherapy is not very effective with this type of cancer”. Ducluzeau said that the surgeon continued to explain to her that “it only works in about 50 per cent of the cases to slow it down. And you have a life span of what looks like to be two months to two years. And I suggest you talk to your family, get your affairs in order, talk to them about your wishes, which was indicating, you know, whether you want to have medically assisted dying or not.”

After receiving this devastating news, Ducluzeau told her kids that night. Having just lost her own mother not long before her diagnosis, Duclezeau said that the day she broke the news to her kids was “the worst day of my life”. She explained that telling her children of the diagnosis was deeply distressing. “Telling them, oh, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Just seeing how upset they were and having lost my own mum just a short while prior to that and knowing what it was like, like going through life without a mother” She said.

Ducluzeau made the decision to do everything she possibly could to fight this battle and come out the other side with the best possible result. After researching for months, she flew out to Baltimore, Maryland to visit Mercy Medical Centre for treatment after being turned down in Canada. She had to pay over $200,000 for the surgery, radiation, scans, travel, and lodging away from her comfortable home.

Ducluzeau’s brother had reached out to his mother in law, who lives in Taiwan, and luckily was able to obtain medical advice from an oncologist there in just one hour. Ducluzeau had scheduled to attend a zoom meeting with the oncologist, but later found out about Dr. Armando Sardi, an oncologist at Mercy Medical Care in Baltimore.

Fortunately, Ducluzeau is now feeling much better than before her surgery, stating that she feels “100 per cent”. She says that she can still do all the activities she could do before she got sick, stating “some days even better. There is nothing that I did before I got sick that I can’t do now. I mean, I can ride my bike 15 kilometres and go have dinner with friends and ride home afterwards. I can golf 18 holes without feeling tired. I started running again and I haven’t run for 10 years.”

Allison Ducluzeau’s story is powerful and moving example of the sad reality behind the assisted suicide agenda, especially in Canada. Doctors told Allison a year ago that euthanasia was her best option. But she is here a year later, doing even better than before and still living a healthy and happy life. 

  

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Caitlin Lawlor

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