Lyon (AFP)
"I'm sorry but I need serenity to leave in peace": Alain Cocq, suffering from an incurable disease and who wanted to let himself die, finally agreed to benefit from palliative care after more than three days without treatment or food .
Mr. Cocq, 57, was "hospitalized yesterday (Monday) evening after an intervention of the Samu," Sophie Medjeberg told AFP on Tuesday, vice-president of the Handi-Mais-Pas-Que association, confirming a information from RTL radio.
The lawyer, appointed as representative by the Dijonnais to assist him in his end of life, had at first confided to fear that the patient had been transported to the Dijon University Hospital and treated against his will.
But he confirmed to her over the phone that he had requested palliative care.
"He objected to the refusal of treatment. He was in too much pain, it was too hard. He still wants to leave but in a process without suffering. It was too difficult," she said.
Ms. Medjeberg did not know Tuesday evening which option the doctors were going to choose: "deep sedation into a coma which may be irreversible or send him home with a mobile palliative care unit," she told AFP.
Contacted, the Dijon University Hospital was not immediately available to comment on these points.
His representative had contacted the patient's doctor on Monday evening to ask him to provide comfort care.
The caregiver who accompanies Mr. Cocq noted that "he was delusional, had foam on his lips and blood in his stool".
Despite Mr. Cocq's confirmation, Ms. Medjeberg remains convinced "that she was helped to make this decision", even though she claims to "respect her choice".
In "terminal phase for 34 years", as he claims, Mr. Cocq suffers from a rare and very painful genetic disease which blocks his arteries.
Failing to have obtained from President Emmanuel Macron an injection of barbiturates "on a compassionate basis" to shorten his suffering, he had decided to let himself die at home, ceasing all treatment, food and hydration since Friday evening.
Activist for the right to die with dignity, Alain Cocq had wanted to broadcast his agony live on Facebook in an attempt to change the legislation on the end of life, but the social network blocked the video on Saturday morning.
The Claeys-Léonetti law on the end of life, adopted in 2016, only authorizes deep sedation for people whose vital prognosis is "in the short term".
What Mr. Cocq cannot prove.
- A nameless disease -
"I understand his desire to leave without giving in to a deep sleep while his body is in pain, and I also understand that at a certain point, he cannot take it any longer. In either case, he will have kept his dignity until 'at the end ", reacted to AFP François Lambert, the nephew of Vincent Lambert," famous cause "of the fight to die with dignity.
Alain Cocq, who no longer left his medical bed in his modest apartment at Les Grésilles, in Dijon, explained in a recent interview with AFP that he had "decided to say stop".
"I have already had nine operations in four years. Little by little, all the vital organs will be affected," he underlined.
"If it's to look at the ceiling like a jerk waiting for it to happen, no!"
His ordeal began at the age of 23.
He then slides down a staircase and dislocates his knee.
The surgeons find that no drop of blood is flowing.
He learns the definition of the word "ischemia": "stop or insufficiency of the circulation of the blood in a tissue or an organ".
Her disease is so orphaned that it doesn't even have a name ... Three people in the world are known to be affected.
Two others died.
A professor of medicine had also told him: "in two weeks you are dead".
But Alain Cocq does not capitulate, fights for all disabled people and a dignified end of life.
In 1993, in a wheelchair, he joined the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
A year later, he toured France and then Europe, still in a wheelchair.
A tireless soldier for his cause, he still participates - in an outpatient bed - in demonstrations of "yellow vests" in Dijon.
All this had since been beyond his strength.
© 2020 AFP