A Canadian man with a debilitating neurological disease says hospital staff repeatedly raised the option of medically assisted death while he fought for years to get the home care that would let him leave the hospital alive.
Roger Foley, who has spinocerebellar ataxia, told Fox News Digital the conversations began in 2016 at Victoria Hospital, part of the London Health Sciences Centre in London, Ontario, where he says he has remained hospitalized for years while pushing for a self-directed home-care arrangement.
A July 7, 2026, letter obtained by Fox News Digital shows his attending physician, Dr. George K. Dresser, stating that Foley could safely leave the hospital if the Ontario government authorized an individualized home-care arrangement.
“By any reasonable clinical standard, you could be discharged from our hospital if you had adequate support at home,” Dresser wrote.
Dresser said Foley has been medically stable for much of his prolonged hospitalization, despite suffering hospital-acquired infections, and said standardized home-care programs have failed to meet his complex needs. He called Foley “a square peg in a round hole” and argued the hospital’s one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work for a patient who needs consistent, individually trained caregivers.
The physician also noted the financial angle: “A community-based, self-directed arrangement would in all likelihood cost substantially less than continued acute admission, while delivering far better-matched care.” He urged Ontario’s Ministry of Health to authorize funding letting Foley recruit, train and manage his own personal support workers.
Foley says assisted dying was raised again during a disputed discharge process in 2017, when he was allegedly threatened with roughly $1,500-a-day hospital charges if he didn’t accept the care arrangement being offered.
“I don’t want to die,” Foley told Fox News Digital, describing his determination to return to his own apartment with caregivers of his own choosing.
Lighting dispute cuts off routine care
Foley also alleges the hospital removed lighting accommodations for his condition in May 2025, making it harder for him to get help eating and drinking. His neurological condition makes him sensitive to certain light wavelengths, including fluorescent light, and for years the hospital had used amber-spectrum lighting so caregivers could assist him without triggering symptoms.
Foley says that changed in May 2025, when the hospital began requiring staff to work under fluorescent lighting instead. He now has to wear large, heavy protective goggles that strain his already compromised neck just to receive routine assistance. Financial limits have kept him from lining up enough outside personal support workers to fill the gap, he said, and he alleges some staff have been told not to provide care unless the fluorescent lights are on — even though others have managed fine under the amber lighting.
Foley also says hospital personnel began asking him about suicidal thoughts again around the time the lighting accommodations were pulled. This time, he refused to engage, saying he no longer trusts the hospital’s intentions. He said he’s not opposed to mental health assessments in general, but the earlier raising of medical assistance in dying (MAID) as an option has made him wary.
A decade-long fight to go home
Foley says he has never given up his apartment, which he describes as accessible and equipped with a ceiling lift. “I have my own apartment. I still pay all my bills,” he said. “The last 10 years I haven’t given up my apartment and I have wonderful community [personal support workers] that are ready to start working for me as soon as I get the self-directed funding.”
That funding would come through Ontario’s Direct Funding Program for adults with physical disabilities or Family-Managed Home Care, which let patients choose and manage their own caregivers instead of relying on agency staff assigned through the provincial system. Foley argues this model would mean safer, more consistent care for someone with his complex needs — and he says his physicians have backed his efforts, but the funding has never come through.
“I’m not giving up,” he said. “I don’t want to die, my daughters know I don’t want to die, my physicians have always been very explicit and direct that it’s not safe to put me in that type of close model that I need direct funding.”
In his letter, Dresser wrote: “I am therefore advocating that the Ministry to consider authorizing an individualized, self-directed funding arrangement that would enable you to be discharged from acute care and to arrange and direct your own care in the community. I am very willing to meet with Ministry staff, to provide whatever clinical documentation is required, and to work collaboratively on the design and safeguards of such an arrangement.”
Before his illness progressed, Foley built a career in banking, worked as a television host and comedian, and trained as a professional wrestler, before his health forced him onto long-term disability. He’s now part of a project called “Bring Roger Home,” working with a nonprofit to raise money for the care he needs to return to his community, including releasing music he recorded years ago. One track, “Limitless with Limitations,” reflects the outlook he says got him through.
“Just because you’re not the person that you were doesn’t mean that the person you are can’t be limitless and achieve positive things and goals,” Foley said. He urged others with disabilities or chronic illness not to give up. “Don’t give up who you are at your core and believe in yourself.”
Foley’s ordeal has shaped his opposition to Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying system, which he argues can’t be properly safeguarded when patients face real gaps in medical care and social support. According to the BBC, Canada’s MAID law, which legalized euthanasia in 2016, now accounts for one in every 20 deaths in the country. Foley argues patients should have real access to treatment, disability assistance and home-care alternatives before assisted death is ever put on the table.
“Even in the darkest times,” Foley said, “you can still find a light at the end of the tunnel to go towards.”
Fox News Digital reached out to London Health Sciences Centre, Ontario Health atHome, the Ontario Ministry of Health, and Dresser for comment but did not immediately receive responses. Cheshire Independent Living Services declined to comment.
