A disabled Canadian man has told the Daily Mail about his living hell of nine years in a hospital where he says caregivers badger him to end his life by lethal injection.
Roger Foley is stuck in a room in the London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) in London, Ontario, where staff repeatedly drop hints about euthanasia, he says.
He suffers from spinocerebellar ataxia, an incurable brain disease that makes it difficult to move. He needs to be lifted so he can eat, drink, and take medication.
Last month the hospital switched out the amber lights in his room for bright bulbs that leave Foley, who is light sensitive, in pain and unable to be lifted for meals, he says.
The 49-year-old ate his last mouthful of food on May 6 and has since received sustenance through a drip.
Now, his strained veins are collapsing, and he is at risk of a heart attack or other health crisis, he adds.
Worse still, says Foley, caregivers regularly raise euthanasia as his way out, under Canada’s massive Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) program.
Foley says he wants to mark his 50th birthday in September living back in his home, composing music, using his home gym, and seeing his family.
‘I don’t know if I’m gonna be alive at the end of this month,’ he told the Daily Mail.
‘I’m fighting to my last breath, but I’m up against a regime that is cruel, desensitized, and out for blood.’
The hospital and Ontario Health did not answer our requests for comment. Both bodies are limited in what they can say without breaking patient confidentiality rules.
Foley was once a go-getting e-commerce director at the Royal Bank of Canada, but his career was derailed by a brain disease that left him needing around-the-clock care.
His state-funded at-home caregivers were negligent, dragging him across floors and banging him into walls, he says.
He ended up in hospital with food poisoning in February 2016 and he has been there ever since.
Foley says he will only go home once he can choose his own caregivers, in what is called ‘self-directed’ care — a rarity in the province’s tax-funded healthcare system.
Ontario Health has refused, he says, leading Foley to sue the hospital, health chiefs and others, and face what he says is increasingly austere care at LHSC. The case was thrown out in January 2024 according to local reports.
Last month, hospital bosses took away the soft amber lighting Foley needs in favor of the regular blue lights that hurt his disease-ravaged eyes, he says.
As a result, he cannot be lifted to eat and has since been fed through a drip, he says.
That raises the risks of heart attacks, infections and blood clots, he says.
‘They know that my body can only last so long without access to food, medicine, and water, and they know that my eyes can’t tolerate the light,’ he said.
‘They would be more than happy if I died of a heart attack.’
Caregivers regularly ask if Foley is ‘suicidal,’ he says, as a prelude to a discussion about MAiD.
‘They’re just throwing that bait,’ he says.
‘I cut them off right away. I tell them I’m not answering their questions. I know where it leads.’
He says he yearns to get back to his one-bedroom apartment in Highbury, where he can compose music and carry out voluntary work for disability rights charities.
Foley’s home has an accessible shower and gym. If he is granted self-directed care, he could also see his mom, two brothers, and niece more often, he says.
‘That’s my light at the end of the tunnel,’ he says.
An online fundraiser for his legal battle has so far raised nearly $3,000.
Foley provided documents and audio recordings that support his claims for self-directed care, including emails from medical professionals who say he should have access to it.
Foley’s $20 million lawsuit against LHSC and other defendants was thrown out last January by Ontario Superior Court, local news reports say.
He launched the case in 2018, saying hospital staff pressured him to MAiD and unjustly refused to provide funding for the level of care he required.
Foley’s is the latest tragic case to spotlight Canada’s mass euthanasia program, which now accounts for a staggering one in 20 deaths in the country.
Some 15,300 people opted for MAiD in 2023, accounting for 4.7 percent of all deaths in the country.
The campaign group Dying With Dignity says procedures are ‘driven by compassion, an end to suffering and discrimination, and desire for personal autonomy’.
Critics say the country’s regulations lack necessary safeguards, devalue the lives of disabled people and prompt caregivers to suggest euthanasia to those who might not otherwise consider it.
Canadians support MAiD by a wide margin and it is now the most common cause of death after cancer, heart disease and accidental injuries, according to official data.
Most of the 2023 cases, about 96 percent, were people with a condition that made a natural death ‘reasonably foreseeable’.
About two-thirds of recipients are cancer sufferers. Heart, respiratory, and brain conditions are also common maladies that drive people to euthanasia.
Some 75,500 people have died from MAiD since the program was launched in 2016.
The average age of a MAiD recipient is 77. Men account for 51.4 percent of such deaths and 48.6 percent are women.
Canada legalized MAiD in 2016 for adults with a serious, advanced condition, disease, or disability that was causing suffering, and where their death was looming.
The law was amended in 2021 to allow people who are not terminally ill to choose death, significantly broadening the number of eligible people.
Today, any adult with a serious illness, disease, or disability can seek help in dying.
Euthanasia is legal in seven countries: Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Spain. It is also legal in several states in .
Other jurisdictions, including a growing number of US states, allow doctor-assisted suicide, in which patients take the drug themselves, typically crushing up and drinking a lethal dose of pills prescribed by a physician.
France, Britain, and the US states of New York and Illinois have in recent months moved to launch their own doctor-assisted suicide programs.