A terminally ill breast cancer patient has issued a heartbreaking plea to MPs ahead of Friday’s vote on assisted dying, saying: “All I’m asking for is to be given the choice.” Tracey Iles, 61, was diagnosed with aggressive stage four cancer in April 2022 after noticing a small lump.

Covid restrictions meant she was alone with a doctor and nurse when she received the “absolutely devastating” news that her disease was incurable and had already spread to her liver. Tracey said: “I was so shocked. It took six months to a year for me to really get it all on board and realise that the future, my future, was going to be very different to what I had thought it would be.”

Tracey, of Cumnor in Oxfordshire, underwent chemotherapy and now has fortnightly injections to keep the disease stable. A brain tumour was also found in September 2023 and removed.

The grandmother-of-one said she has now come to terms with the fact that “I probably know what I’m going to die from”.

She focuses on enjoying every day and making memories with her husband Ralph, daughter Lauren, and 18-month old granddaughter Ada.

But Tracey added: “The only thing that is of major concern to me is how I’m going to die and if I’m going to suffer. And if I am, how long will that be for? Will my family witness something?

“I’ve come into contact with lots of people who are in the same situation as me and have lost loved ones, and some of the stories have been horrific.

“All I’m asking for is to be given the choice. Just to know that the option [of assisted dying] is available for me would make such a difference.”

Tracey was told three years ago that she likely had between two and seven years to live. She does not want her family to be left with painful memories of her final days and weeks.

She explained: “I want them to think of me as the person I am now, today — a fun-loving and positive character, not somebody who’s suffering.

“It’s there all the time in the back of my mind. Whilst I don’t let it trouble my day-to-day, I know that as I get closer, when I stop responding to the treatment, I do know that I will at some point die.

“I want to know that I can just take that option if I want it, I don’t want to worry.”

MPs are expected to hold a major vote on Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill on Friday afternoon.

It will decide whether the legislation — which is backed by the Express Give Us Our Last Rights crusade — should progress to the House of Lords.

Tracey urged MPs to consider the evidence from countries which have legalised assisted dying and where the fears described by opponents have not come to pass.

She said similar laws in other jurisdictions were “not as robust as what Kim is proposing but they haven’t gone down this slippery slope that people talk about, people haven’t been coerced into making a decision that they don’t want to make”.

Tracey, who has been a supporter of the Dignity in Dying campaign group for 16 years, added: “In this country we should have a choice. Of course we have to listen to opponents but we can get it right, as other countries have.

“Please make the option available for us here, with the adequate safeguards. This is 2025, we have got to be able to do this.

“I feel very positive, I really enjoy my life, enjoy every day. I’m not scared of dying, I’ve come to terms with that. I’m 61 — at one point I didn’t think I was going to reach 60.

“I’m eternally grateful that I’m here for as long as I’m here and have reached this age, but the only thing that worries me now is how I’m going to die and whether it’s going to be a long, horrible, drawn-out process.”