This may not be a quality that you look for in a friend, but you are not me, and you should be extremely grateful that you are not in my predicament. Sure, we all die, but you, unlike I, know the day that I am going to die. That day is tomorrow. That day is not a day too soon.

I first met Dr. De Burgh at a time when I had given up hope of dying with dignity. Unless you have been there, you cannot begin to understand how demoralizing it is to have your family at your bedside, seeing your wet the bed side. In Belgium, Euthanasia is legal. In Belgium, there is hope.

After making all the arrangements via the internet, I was met at the airport by Dr. De Burgh. He didn’t look like your average doctor; he was tall and broad, had long blond hair, a kind, welcoming smile, and sympathetic eyes. I guessed that he was in his mid-thirties. On the ride to the hospital we talked about nothing in particular and I formed an impression that he was a man who I would be telling my innermost thoughts and fears in a matter of days to.  I was right.

The hospital was a stark contrast to the NHS hellhole where I had been made to feel sub-human. Gone were the overcrowded rooms and wards, the suicidal feng shui, the totalitarian nurses, and most of all, the doctors that looked down their noses at you and made you feel like an inconvenience. This hospital was more like a nursing home minus the geriatric patient roaming the corridors searching for yester years. It was more like a hospice, only the patients didn’t have to wait as long.

My first night at the hospital after an agreeable meal, we sat together and soon enough I found myself chatting to Simon, for we were now on a first name basis, about things that I had never told anyone. For the most part he sat listening, which was a welcome relief from my family and friends who thought I was crazy to want to die and had even implied that I was being selfish and only thinking about myself. Maybe I am being selfish, but at the end of the day it is my body that has to suffer in agonizing pain while passing the time watching time pass. If you cut yourself, what do you do?  You get a plaster. If you have a headache, you take a parecetamol. If you were I, what would I do?