Canadian Girl’s Assisted-suicide Date Arrives — And She’s Nonetheless Alive, Because of Glenn Beck
A Canadian woman’s assisted-suicide date came and went last week because she now has hope for recovery from her illness — courtesy of Glenn Beck.
MAiD in Canada
Jolene Van Alstine, 45, of Regina, Saskatchewan, has spent eight years suffering from normocalcemic primary hyperparathryroidism, an endocrine disease that causes nausea, vomiting, and excruciating bone pain.
Van Alstine underwent three surgeries but needs another procedure. Unfortunately, no one in Saskatchewan is capable of performing it, and Van Alstine can’t get a referral to an out-of-province surgeon without seeing an endocrinologist — and they’re all booked up.
On the other hand, finding two doctors who will sign off on assisted suicide, known in Canada as Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD), is no problem. On January 7, Van Alstine was officially permitted to have a physician kill her.
“I never wanted to go through with MAiD, but I lost hope,” she told the Toronto Sun. “I’m Roman Catholic. Suicide is a sin, but I just couldn’t stand the pain and nausea and vomiting and overheating 24/7.”
According to the paper:
She said she found herself “sleeping underneath a cooling blanket at night with the temperature turned down anywhere from 16.5 C to 13 C [62 to 55 degrees Fahrenheit], sometimes sleeping on the cold bathroom floor with cold water running in the shower, throwing up my medications into a bucket in the bathroom and them fishing out my pills and then having to actually retake them (the ones I threw up) because a lot of them can’t be filled early because they are controlled substances.”
Van Alstine told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that she hadn’t “left the house in eight years except to go to the doctor for blood work or to be admitted into the hospital.”
Pleading With Politicians
In November, Van Alstine and her partner, Miles Sundeen, appeared at the Saskatchewan legislature, begging for help in getting her surgery.
“My friends have stopped visiting me. I’m isolated. I’ve been alone lying on the couch for eight years, sick and curled up in a ball, pushing for the day to end,” she told reporters there. “I go to bed at six at night because I can’t stand to be awake anymore.”
In a Saskatchewan New Democratic Party press release urging provincial Health Minister Jeremy Cockrill to meet with Van Alstine, Sundeen expressed empathy for his partner.
“I understand how long and how much she’s suffered and it’s horrific, the physical suffering, but it’s also the mental anguish,” he said. “No hope — no hope for the future, no hope for any relief. I don’t want her to do it [undergo MAiD], but I understand where she’s at.”
Cockrill did hear Van Alstine out, but to little avail.
Glenn Beckons
In early December, Beck learned of Van Alstine’s plight and announced: “If there is any surgeon in America who can do this, I’ll pay for this patient to come down here for treatment.”
“THIS is the reality of ‘compassionate’ progressive healthcare,” he added. “Canada must END this insanity and Americans can NEVER let it spread here.”
Leftists criticized Beck for, as they saw it, using an ailing woman to make a political point. Beck, in an interview with Toronto radio host Jerry Agar, conceded that politics played a part in his decision but contended that compassion for Van Alstine was his primary motive. Wrote the Sun:
“The human part of me” says “how can we help her? She shouldn’t be killed because of this,” Beck told Agar. “This is a warning to all of us. I don’t think we survive as a [civilization] if we don’t accept life and reject this culture of death. It’s a very dark and bad step. Every time the world goes down this kind of road it ends up with civilization destruction.”
Within hours of his announcement, Beck had surgeons lined up to help Van Alstine and had been in contact with her.
Eventually, the Norman Parathyroid Center near Tampa, Florida, agreed to treat Van Alstine for free. “Beck has talked with Dr. Jim Norman personally, as well as President Donald J. Trump’s Centers [for] Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz,” reported the Sun.
Beck’s staff has also been working with the State Department to expedite passports for Van Alstine and Sundeen, neither of whom had one as of a month ago.
Supplemental Solution?
Crossing the border may end up being unnecessary. According to the Sun, doctors are pursuing another line of treatment that could obviate the need for surgery:
“I have been taking high doses of calcium and vitamin D,” [Van Alstine] said. “This was recommended by the specialist from Toronto and the surgeon in Florida agreed that this should be tried first.”
Jolene said doctors told her “if it brings my parathyroid levels down to low normal, then I don’t need another surgery, I need an endocrinologist who deals with patients who need monitoring of their calcium, vitamin D and magnesium levels and can adjust them as needed.”
However, “if it does not bring my levels down then there is still another gland inside me somewhere that is overactive.”
Another operation is possible. But hopefully not.
Van Alstine still has a long way to go before her troubles are behind her. But at least she now has a reason to live thanks to an American pundit — not a Canadian health system that would rather kill than heal.