Iowa Dad Traveling To Switzerland To End His Life After Early-Onset Alzheimer’s Diagnosis

A dad from Des Moines has made a major decision.

66-year-old Rusty Martin worked as a communications director for Iowa Senate Democrats for 24 years before he retired in 2022. The next year, he was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. He realized that his previous actions like forgetting about meetings or making uncharacteristic mistakes, were signs of it.

On August 13th, he, his wife of 28 years, and their sons will travel to Dignitas in Switzerland, a non-profit that provides physican-assisted suicide.

As to his reasoning, he says the disease has already made for a lot of difficulties and knowing his brain is regressing is hard. He told the Des Moines Register:

I felt terrible for several years. Being undiagnosed and struggling to fix this, which I could not do, was terrible. Finally I had an answer to all the stress and struggle. It was not my fault. That just really was a huge relief to me. And then the question was, what was going to happen? How was this going to end?...Alzheimer’s is a long goodbye. I mean, here I am walking around, driving a car, doing this, doing that but oh yeah, I am definitely gonna die and this is gonna kill me and I’m going to lose my mind in the process...When it comes to choosing when I die, that is something I care about and that’s something I’ve spent a lot of time working on. I could easily live a long time after I’ve lost my mind and that’s what led me to decide that I would end this on my own terms.

That's why he has decided to end his life with medical aid in dying (also called MAID). He posted a video on his social media about it.

His conversations with his siblings and kids about it "shocked" them but they have been supportive and understanding about it.

His wife, Kay, supports his decision even though she doesn't want to lose him. She said it would "just be miserable" for him to not know who he is or who the people he loves are.

Iowa does not allow MAID though a few states do, including Illinois, but it's different than Switzerland as in the U.S., the patient administers the drug themselves rather than the doctor doing it.