I am trapped, paralysed and fighting chronic pain – let me decide when it ends

How naive I was. When, seven months ago, the bill on assisted dying was finally passed by the House of Commons, I remember a feeling of profound relief. No celebration, no triumphalism, just a sense of solace in the knowledge that needless suffering can be reduced.

At last, I thought, our parliamentarians have carried out the quietly settled will of the people and given us what we want: the right to choose a peaceful death when life becomes intolerable. And on a personal level I felt reassured that when my broken body nears the end, nobody else would be prosecuted.

I should have known, in today’s political climate, that the forces of darkness would rise. Filibustering in the House of Lords – let’s call it what it is: calculated, unconstitutional obstructionism – seems to have doomed the bill. In Scotland, with uncanny symmetry, the fate of the equivalent assisted dying bill very much hangs in the balance, picked apart by negativity and naysayers.

Many people will be as angered as I am. YouGov polling last summer found that 75% of Britons believe assisted dying should in principle be legal in some form in the UK, with 14% against. Seven in 10 supported Kim Leadbeater’s bill as it was passed by the Commons – spread across the political spectrum: 80% of Labour voters, 72% of Lib Dems, 71% of Conservatives and 64% of Reform UK voters in favour.

In an age of public division, those figures demonstrate a remarkable moral consensus on this issue. The electorate desires the greater good with sensible safeguards. They see loved ones suffer; they want ownership of their right not to do the same.

But ideologues in the Lords, rejects from Boris Johnson’s disgraced coterie, are cynically using bad-faith tactics for political ends, presumably seeking to thwart liberal democracy and nurture nostalgia for the good old days when Britain was great and suicide was a criminal act.

Their behaviour disgusts me. They cloak it in righteousness; they claim they act to protect the vulnerable minority (while denying the majority); they spout platitudes about hours battling the agonies of personal conscience.

What do they know of agony, these entitled game-players, motivated only by dogmatism and power? They’ve no understanding of desperation, or what it’s like to endure the privations of the NHS without middle-class medical connections to pull strings, or poverty and powerlessness.

In the end, we can rely only on ourselves. Self-determination is fundamental. Twenty years ago I watched my mother, both demented and lucid, attempt repeatedly to escape from her house and then her care home in order to lie down and die. I dealt with the fallout when eventually she succeeded. Now I am trapped in a paralysed body I hate, fighting co-morbidities and chronic pain, to the point where, when things get too much, I am already good friends with the thought of a peaceful death of my choosing.

Death doesn’t scare me, but relying on palliative care would terrify me. NHS resources shrink steadily. A tiny example: prescription Lidocaine pain patches, the only things that get me through a bad night, have been withdrawn by my GP practice for reasons of cost.

One final random thought – if not now for assisted dying, then when? The neanderthal opposition will be emboldened. I console myself with how lucky we are that the Abortion Act, the underpinning of women’s rights over their own bodies, passed when it did – because fat chance it would now.

Melanie Reid is tetraplegic after ­breaking her neck and back in a riding accident in April 2010

Photograph by Carl Court / Getty