Last time I wrote about dying at home, it was my personal view of my grandmothers' euthanasia in Holland.1 I have now been involved in a similar situation, a death from cancer in Britain — and I was not impressed. This time it was not a relative but a friend — an 88-year-old gentleman who died of lung cancer. I am a general practitioner in another city. I watched things unfold; I wanted to be there for him and not get involved.
I visited him in hospital, walking assertively onto the ward outside visiting hours. He was discharged on a Friday and told the Macmillan nurses would contact him on Monday. He was short of breath at rest, but talking in sentences, mobile, and eating small meals. His pleural effusion had been …