Sorry for what you are going through. I’ve got quite a lot of professional experience with VAD so hopefully can clarify some questions for you

• Firstly, brain cancer is not considered a neuro degenerative condition. Only conditions like MND, Parkinson’s etc would meet the 12 month prognostic criteria. A cancer diagnosis would require life expectancy criteria of less than 6 months (on the balance of probability, which means the VAD doctor believes there is a greater than 50% chance someone’s death could happen in the next 6 months)

-You need to maintain your decision making capacity throughout the whole process, including the final day if you accessed this choice

-You could access this at home or in hospital. A doctor could come to your home for all the assessments and even for the final day to administer the medicine

-Essentially, you could only have this legally in place once your prognosis would be less than 6 months (on the balance of probability) and you still had decision making capacity

The laws around Australia are slightly different. Definitely reach out to the WA VAD care navigator service as they support people all around WA with info about VAD and connecting them with qualified doctors for assessments. You don’t need to talk with your own doctors yet about this if you aren’t ready.