Only when the assisted dying bill passes will I stop feeling angry about Terry Pratchett’s final years

Next year, it will be a decade since my friend Terry Pratchett died, aged 66, having suffered for years with posterior cortical atrophy, a rare, young-onset form of Alzheimer’s disease. I, for one, am the only person suffering from Terry Pratchett’s posterior cortical atrophy – which, for some unknown reason, still leaves me able to write, with the help of my computer and friend, bestselling novels…” The author of the hugely popular, 41-strong Discworld series of fantasy novels, Terry was also the catalyst for a societal shift in attitudes towards dementia. I’m angry that Terry spent so much of the precious time he had left fighting for assisted dying when he could have been doing other things he so enjoyed. Had an assisted death been available to him at a time that he needed it, he certainly wouldn’t have chosen to spend so much of his final years talking about death and dying. During the “campaigning for assisted dying” period of Terry’s life, which began in his late fifties with his Alzheimer’s diagnosis in 2007, we met some remarkable people for whom the lack of a compassionate assisted dying law robbed them of life.