'Do not resuscitate' tattoo means exactly what it says

BY EMMA BAILEY

Paula Westoby is very black and white about what she wants, with "do not resuscitate" tattooed across her chest.

The Exit International Dunedin convenor, who was born and raised in Timaru, wants to set up a chapter in her old home town.

The lively 81-year-old is not ready to shuffle off the mortal coil yet but when she does she wants to die peacefully and choose how it happens.

She is part of the organisation Exit International, founded by Darwin's Dr Philip Nitschke, also known as Dr Death. The organisation advocated end-of-life choices and assisted suicide, with chapters around the world and soon, Ms Westoby hopes, in Timaru.

"It is unfortunate the way the word euthanasia is used now. It is a Greek word meaning a good death.

"People can't imagine what it is like to be really sick and have no quality of life. If you get to the stage where you are half-paralysed and in terrible pain, would you want to hang about in that state of being?"

She is happy discussing the subject that normally makes others uncomfortable and became part of Exit a few years ago after she went to listen to Dr Nitschke speak.

"He asked me to be the convenor in Dunedin which I am. The problem is it's actually quite a hard slog there. I have friend in Nelson and her group is thriving, so I want to see what interest there is in Timaru.

"I want people you can rebound ideas with; I am fairly lively in my thinking. Obviously I am a bit different from your little old lady at home baking scones."

She credits her outlook to a less- than-conventional upbringing in Timaru. "I applied for training college but wasn't accepted and found out a few years later the headmistress at Timaru Girls' High school vetoed it because of my agnostic views.

With training college not an option, in 1947 upon leaving school she decided to become a nurse.

She credits being a nurse with firming up her belief in the right to choose your end.

When her five children had grown up she sold her house and all her belongings, jumped on a Russian ship and travelled to Europe. She lived for a while in London and did not return to New Zealand for 20 years.

Now in Dunedin, age is no reason for the grandmother of 12 to slow down, having the "do not resuscitate" tattoo when she was 79 and averaging one skydive a year.

"I am going to do my next jump in Queenstown. It will be the highest jump I do, so high we probably will need oxygen as we glide down through the Remarkables.

"I actually hope I die doing a sky jump. The instructors have told me about one man who had a heart attack and died while doing a dive and when he got to the ground he had a huge smile on his face."

- © Fairfax NZ News