Confined to a bed, 49-year-old quadriplegic Christian Rossiter describes his life as a "living hell".
Once an avid traveller who has "flown around the world three times", he now passes the time thinking of ways to kill himself.
Speaking articulately through a tracheotomy tube in his neck at his northern suburbs home this week, Mr Rossiter made an impassioned plea for the State's politicians to have the courage to pass laws that would allow him to die peacefully.
"Don't be too afraid to put sufferers out of their misery," he said in a simple message to MPs.
"It's not a decision I've just arrived at. I'm a prisoner in my own body. I can't even eat or drink. I can't change the channels on the TV, except through a special device that I control with neck movements . . . life is a living hell.
"I can't scratch any itch, I can't brush my teeth, I can't go to the toilet."
Living in constant discomfort and pain, with Foxtel as his only source of entertainment, Mr Rossiter reflects on a life that he claims is no longer worth living.
"I do times tables (in my head) to amuse myself," he said. "I have difficulty getting to sleep — I didn't sleep a wink last night."
Mr Rossiter is one of many West Australians who are waiting for socalled living wills laws to be proclaimed, at which point he intends to make it clear that he does not want artificial nutrition, effectively opting to starve himself to death.
His lasting wish is to educate anti-euthanasia crusaders about a person's right to die.
He invited those groups to spend a day with him, showing them the monotonous cycle his life has become — being moved at regular intervals, taking pain-killers every six hours and co-ordinating TV channels to ensure his appetite for the world's news is fulfilled.
Mr Rossiter completed a bachelor of economics at the University of WA and embarked on a career as a stockbroker in his mid 20s.
Mr Rossiter was hit by a car and endured two serious falls, with the most recent one last year representing the "final straw" and leaving him confined to a bed, suffering spastic quadriplegia.
WA Voluntary Euthanasia Society president Ranjan Ray said people like Mr Rossiter were living proof that so-called living wills legislation, recording a person's treatment wishes in a legally binding document, did not go far enough.
"A living will allow for a prolonged death, but euthanasia offers a quick and easy death," he said. "Why not just go one step further?"
Mr Rossiter has investigated flying to Switzerland, where assisted suicide is allowed, but ruled out that prospect because he can't pick up the cup of lethal ingredients or swallow them.
Instead, he will continue to demand that his only source of nutrition is removed.
YASMINE PHILLIPS
