Treadwell was active and well - doctor
Now retired doctor, Lorna McCann, was asked at the High Court in Wellington yesterday about a November 2015 entry in the diary of her patient Annemarie Treadwell, where Treadwell wrote that she told her doctor she did not feel bad enough to take her own life immediately, but she had told her daughter, ‘‘not another winter’’, and she was a member of Exit.
McCann said she did not recollect the conversation, and hoped she would have recorded it, if it happened.
She agreed the diary entry might have been quite inaccurate.
Treadwell, 77, took her own life in June 2016, using the drug pentobarbitone at the Kilbirnie, Wellington, retirement village where she had lived for several years.
The Crown alleges the chairman of the Wellington branch of euthanasia organisation Exit International, Susan Dale Austen, 67, aided Treadwell’s suicide.
Some of the evidence against Austen comes from Treadwell’s diary entries that spoke about her attempts to get pentobarbitone, and help she had from ‘‘Suzy’’.
Austen has pleaded not guilty to charges of aiding Treadwell’s suicide, and two charges of importing pentobarbitone, a barbiturate whose only legal use in New Zealand was to euthanise animals.
Treadwell’s daughter has already told Austen’s trial that her mother had disabling pain in her hands that was spreading to her feet, and sometimes her hips.
She also had depression. McCann said Treadwell reported having aches and pains and took paracetamol, and sometimes stronger pain relief, and took medication for depression. The antidepressant dose was higher in the winter.
Despite her problems, Treadwell struck the doctor as being good at making positive decisions for herself. Among her many older patients Treadwell had been one of the more active, well people, McCann said.
The trial was in its second day and could last three weeks.