When Canadian pensioner Brigitte Stegemann died in July at her care home, it was hardly the dignified and peaceful passing that families and friends hope for a fading loved one.
The 83-year-old German-born cancer sufferer was hooked up to an IV by a nurse who’d allegedly struggled to connect a needle and hadn’t even been wearing gloves and then given a lethal drug.
And even as she died, members of her family – led by a devoted granddaughter, Brigitte Kranendonk – were locked in a bitter battle with Stegemann’s carers and practitioners of Canada’s controversial euthanasia program over whether the deeply religious octogenarian actually wanted to die at all.
