RIP Melissa Brooks: ‘It Starts with Pain and It Ends with Pain’
/By Ann Marie Gaudon
Melissa Brooks wanted me to tell her story once she was dead. She wanted others in pain to know her experience in trying to access medically assisted death in Canada.
Melissa was in pain -- severe, intractable pain -- and if she met the criteria for Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program, she’d be able to end her life with dignity and mercy. Melissa suffered from multiple chronic conditions, was mostly wheelchair bound, and legally blind. Euthanasia is what she desired, but applying for MAID wasn’t easy.
“It starts with pain and it ends with pain. And there’s a bunch of medical system mess-ups in the middle,” Melissa told me.
Melissa was free with her words, so honest and articulate. She had different personas she’d use to tell people about her desire for death, because if she shared how deep her misery was, Melissa thought she’d lose friends. On the days she couldn’t hide her pain, she didn’t interact with people and expressed to me that this was a lonely place to be. Melissa felt that no one knew what she was going through.
“The quickest way to lose friends is to be honest about how much pain you’re in,” she said.
Curiously, once she requested MAID, Melissa felt a newness in her relationships. Her friends now knew they had a limited time to grieve and they no longer had to carry the “nitty gritty” of her for an extended time.
Most of our conversations happened as Melissa went through the strict process that MAID requires for medical assistance in dying to be granted.
I wrote a column about the many difficulties my friend Maggie Bristow had accessing MAID to end her life, after nearly three decades with chronic pain.
Melissa’s struggles with MAID were different. This intrigued me – what is going on here? Why isn’t there a standard protocol? You meet the criteria and then you are approved. But that’s not what happened.
You need two doctors to assess your application for MAID. Melissa's first assessor pissed her off by repeatedly saying her medical condition was “complicated.”
Of course it was – all MAID cases are complicated.
MELISSA BROOKS AND HER SERVICE DOG, RUBY
“I’m complicated, my case is complicated, my pain is complicated. I think it’s medical BS and I almost fell for it, like I was asking for too much,” Melissa said. “I didn’t feel that complicated until these people were telling me that I was. I have been suffering for decades, my quality-of-life sucks, and I don’t want to do this anymore.”
‘A Moral Dilemma’
In 2016, Canada’s Parliament passed legislation that allows eligible adults to request medical assistance in dying. However, a person’s death had to be “reasonably foreseeable.” This was challenged and Parliament amended the legislation in 2020 to create the current two-track system.
MAID still requires a “grievous and irremediable medical condition,” but a reasonably foreseeable natural death is no longer necessary. If you’re likely to die soon, you’re on track one. If you aren’t and you still want an assisted death, you’re on track two.
With my friend Maggie Bristow, nothing was that simple. It took years for her request to be approved.
Melissa also went through struggles with MAID, with her first assessor questioning her mental well-being. The problem for them was that Melissa was not mentally ill. The first assessor, not having found any reason to deny Melissa’s request except for her own conscience, did eventually say yes. But that did not come without a price.
“When the first assessor called me well after 8pm – when she knows that is not a good time for me -- she called to assassinate my character,” Melissa said. “She was so mean and made the process so much worse. She accused me of lying and yelled at me over the phone, ‘You’ve put me in a moral dilemma!’”
Poor Melissa was so upset. We talked about how this truly had nothing to do with her and that this particular assessor should not be working for MAID. Not all assessors are equipped to deal with life and death decisions.
This first assessor was so enraged and upset that she told Melissa she would next be seeing “the cream of the crop” assessor -- the one who teaches the others. It was bad news from the beginning, as his treatment was also less than desirable. He sent a psychiatrist to Melissa’s home to assess her mental health.
The psychiatrist made it a point to tell Melissa that he preferred to begin with a clean slate and never searched or looked up anyone’s history before meeting them. That was a blatant lie. Melissa was an abuse survivor, but that was not the reason she was seeking MAID. The psychiatrist asked questions that only someone who had done a deep dive into her medical history would be asking.
It was all so fake, and Melissa fired this second assessor and his psychiatrist. She was back to having one yes.
‘Killed Me With Kindness’
Next came the third assessor and Melissa was hopeful. She seemed open and progressive. She told Melissa she identified as queer (I’m not sure why or how that would have mattered), but she was kind and that was an improvement.
The process of requesting and receiving MAID should take 90 days. Melissa’s case was taking much longer. In terrible pain and desperate, Melissa tried to take her own life. It did not work, but landed her in the psychiatric ward of her local hospital. I believe this is what sealed her fate with the oh-so-nice third assessor.
“(She) killed me with kindness after not even spending an hour with me, just to tell me she would be saying no,” Melissa said. Now Melissa was in limbo. She had a “yay” and a “nay” from two assessors.
That made Melissa even more frustrated. She met MAID’s criteria of being over age 18 and having an “irrevocable and grievous medical diagnosis” that could not be cured or treated.
“MAID’s job is not to fix the patient,” she told me. “Their job is to say, ‘Yes, they met the criteria’ and to move forward, not ‘This is icky because they’re young and they don’t look like they have a terrible life. They don’t look like they’re suffering or that they want to die.’”
Now Melissa had no help, no guidance, no nothing. She wanted to put in a complaint. But to whom?
A few miserable weeks later, she did get something. It seemed to begin as a urinary tract infection (UTI), which could be quite dangerous for Melissa as she was so physically vulnerable to begin with. Then she started to cough. I asked her if she would call her practitioner for treatment and she agreed, but I saw the writing on the wall. Her doctor said she had a UTI, plus pneumonia, but agreed with Melissa that this could be treated from home.
You may have already figured out what came next. Melissa did not take the antibiotics she was prescribed, and stopped eating and drinking. She had a “Do Not Resuscitate” order from before she even applied for MAID. Can you blame her? I sure didn’t.
On January 30, while I was working, I had a voicemail message from Melissa telling me that she was going to begin palliative sedation that night and to say a gracious goodbye. She left her friend’s number to call should I need anything.
Melissa Brooks died on January 31, 2025. You might think for a moment that is what she wanted, but it is not. In the end, MAID was an epic fail for her. She wanted to die at home, perhaps with a friend like me, and for sure with her beloved service dog.
I am so sorry Melissa that everyone failed you. My hope is that you somehow find peace in the afterlife. You were one-of-a-kind and I shall never forget you. Blessings.
Ann Marie Gaudon is a registered social worker and psychotherapist in the Waterloo region of Ontario, Canada with a specialty in chronic pain management. She has been a chronic pain patient for over 30 years and works part-time as her health allows. For more information about Ann Marie's counseling services, visit her website.
