Wendy Duffy has flown to the Swiss clinic Pegasos clinic to end her life, unable to live with the loss of her son after she desperately tried to save him with CPR
A British woman has flown to this clinic to end her life, unable to live with the death of her son(Image: Pegasos)
A healthy mum who has flown to Switzerland to end her life at a controversial assisted dying clinic told how she gave her son CPR after he choked on a tomato in his sandwich.
Wendy Duffy, 56, has been approved for assisted dying at the Pegasos clinic unable to live with her heartbreak at the loss of Marcus, her only child four years ago. She says she doesn’t want to be “in this world” without her son. She also tried to take her own life, and failed.
“I don’t care about anything any more. I exist. I don’t live. When Marcus died, I died too, inside. On my deathbed I’ll wear his T-shirt, which still smells of him,” she told the Daily Mail.
The former care worker from the West Midlands, who is medically trained, told how she desperately tried to save her son and screamed for help. She told how his birth was the ‘happiest of my life’ but his death left her heartbroken and unable to live on.
Wendy says her life is ‘agony’ without her son Marcus
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Music-loving Marcus had fallen asleep on the sofa eating a sandwich with a hangover. “I’d been making myself one. Cheese and onion, and he said he’d have one. ‘Throw a couple of those cherry tomatoes on mine,’ he said.’
She cut the tomatoes in half and left him to his sandwich and was ‘getting stuff ready for work’. But to her horror when she returned to the room “he was purple”. At first the mum thought it was ‘his heart’ and used her medical training to try and help him.
She screamed for help and after performing CPR, paramedics arrived. Later in hospital, the Mail said, she found out half of a cherry tomato had been found lodged in Marcus’s windpipe and had taken specialist equipment to remove it. Tragically his brain had been starved of oxygen and he died.
“They think he must have fallen asleep when he still had food in his mouth. That’s the only comfort, that there was no struggle,” she said.
Inside the Pegasos clinic where a British woman has flown to take her own life(Image: Pegasos)
Wendy sat with him for five days before the machines were switched off. By then his organs had been taken for transplant. “Afterwards, I got a letter from the man who got his heart. He said that thanks to Marcus he was able to play with his kids again.” Another recipient was a four-year-old child. “That was a comfort, but it also ripped at me.”
Nine months after his death she took an overdose and now she is preparing to make the journey to Switzerland. She admits Marcus would probably tell her to ‘Get a dog, Mum, buck up your ideas’, but ultimately he would understand.”
The Pegasos clinic surrounded by countryside(Image: Pegasos)
Wendy bought a one way plane ticket today as she has no plans to return from Pegasos, a ‘suicide clinic’ which has agreed to help her end her life.
Her plan to end her life has been a year in the making, paying £10,000, writing letters to her loved ones, choosing a deathbed outfit and picking the music which is the last thing she will hear – she has chosen Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars ‘Die with a Smile’.
Wendy will be cremated in Switzerland and her ashes sent back to her family which she wants scattered by her son’s bench.
In the UK the assisted dying bill would not allow such cases, as it would only be accessible to those who are terminally ill with six months to live and in sound mind. The more famous Dignitas in Switzerland would also have rejected Wendy.
But Pegasos reportedly accepted the grieving mum after a panel of experts including psychiatrists passed her application after months of assessment and having had access to her full medical records.