VICENZA – “Good morning friends near and far today I am very happy and it is a great day, it was here, the medical director of the Aulss 7 Pedemontana, to whom I had forwarded my request for assisted suicide on June 30, I inform you that my request it was accepted, and now I am free to decide when I want to put an end to my suffering. ” Stefano Gheller, the 49-year-old from Cassola (Vicenza), wrote it on his Facebook page, attached to a respirator 24 hours a day, who asked for assisted suicide.
Gheller, who has been living in a wheelchair for 34 years due to muscular dystrophy, tells on the net that “his uncle Paolo, his mother’s brother, was also at the meeting with his aunt Rosanna”. “My sister sent her but she couldn’t come, then she told me she didn’t come – he adds – because she would be sick, and I imagined it.”
The man says he is “happy that this right has been recognized and hopes it will partly be useful for any other people who request it”.
On 27 June he wrote to Ulss 7 Pedemontana to ask for legal access to assisted suicide. He said that he could have gone to Switzerland, but that he had decided to stay and fight his ‘battle’ in Italy. “My Aulss I must say was quick compared to other cases to give me an answer and will bear all the costs for when I decide to do so – he says – on when it will depend on two factors, the first obviously on the course of my illness and what will still take away from me most of what it has already taken away from me so far, then it will depend on how much the Italian state and the Veneto Region will help me economically to lead a dignified life by being able to pay adequate assistance to my needs, because having to get up every morning and face the day is already it lasts like this, but in addition to the burden of the disease, having to think about how to pay for adequate assistance and not only becomes a further continuous burden that consumes you the few strengths one has “.
Gheller says that “obviously when he decides to end his life I’ll say it, he apologizes if he hasn’t interacted much lately but he hasn’t been well both physically and mentally”. “I love you and I thank you all – he concludes – who are always close to me”.