My right to death with dignity.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Married for a year, Brittany Maynard, 29, found she had aggressive brain cancer
- She had six months to live, and she didn't want her family to watch her dying in pain
- Maynard and her family moved to Oregon to take advantage of the Death with Dignity law
- She says nobody has the right to take away the option from someone who is terminally ill
I was 29 years old. I'd been married for just over a year. My husband and I were trying for a family.
Brittany Maynard and Dan Diaz on their wedding day. She had been
married a little more than a year when she was diagnosed with brain
cancer.
Brittany Maynard shares a moment with her bridesmaids.
Our lives devolved into
hospital stays, doctor consultations and medical research. Nine days
after my initial diagnoses, I had a partial craniotomy and a partial
resection of my temporal lobe. Both surgeries were an effort to stop the
growth of my tumor.
In April, I learned that
not only had my tumor come back, but it was more aggressive. Doctors
gave me a prognosis of six months to live.
Because my tumor is so
large, doctors prescribed full brain radiation. I read about the side
effects: The hair on my scalp would have been singed off. My scalp would
be left covered with first-degree burns. My quality of life, as I knew
it, would be gone.
After months of research,
my family and I reached a heartbreaking conclusion: There is no
treatment that would save my life, and the recommended treatments would
have destroyed the time I had left.
I considered passing away
in hospice care at my San Francisco Bay-area home. But even with
palliative medication, I could develop potentially morphine-resistant
pain and suffer personality changes and verbal, cognitive and motor loss
of virtually any kind.
Brittany Maynard and Dan Diaz
Because the rest of my
body is young and healthy, I am likely to physically hang on for a long
time even though cancer is eating my mind. I probably would have
suffered in hospice care for weeks or even months. And my family would
have had to watch that.
I did not want this
nightmare scenario for my family, so I started researching death with
dignity. It is an end-of-life option for mentally competent, terminally
ill patients with a prognosis of six months or less to live. It would
enable me to use the medical practice of aid in dying: I could request
and receive a prescription from a physician for medication that I could
self-ingest to end my dying process if it becomes unbearable.
I quickly decided that death with dignity was the best option for me and my family.
We had to uproot from California to Oregon, because Oregon is one of only five states where death with dignity is authorized.
I met the criteria for
death with dignity in Oregon, but establishing residency in the state to
make use of the law required a monumental number of changes. I had to
find new physicians, establish residency in Portland, search for a new
home, obtain a new driver's license, change my voter registration and
enlist people to take care of our animals, and my husband, Dan, had to
take a leave of absence from his job. The vast majority of families do
not have the flexibility, resources and time to make all these changes.
I've had the medication
for weeks. I am not suicidal. If I were, I would have consumed that
medication long ago. I do not want to die. But I am dying. And I want to
die on my own terms.
I would not tell anyone
else that he or she should choose death with dignity. My question is:
Who has the right to tell me that I don't deserve this choice? That I
deserve to suffer for weeks or months in tremendous amounts of physical
and emotional pain? Why should anyone have the right to make that choice
for me?
Now that I've had the
prescription filled and it's in my possession, I have experienced a
tremendous sense of relief. And if I decide to change my mind about
taking the medication, I will not take it.
Having this choice at
the end of my life has become incredibly important. It has given me a
sense of peace during a tumultuous time that otherwise would be
dominated by fear, uncertainty and pain.
Now, I'm able to move
forward in my remaining days or weeks I have on this beautiful Earth, to
seek joy and love and to spend time traveling to outdoor wonders of
nature with those I love. And I know that I have a safety net.
I plan to celebrate my
husband's birthday on October 26 with him and our family. Unless my
condition improves dramatically, I will look to pass soon thereafter.
I hope for the sake of
my fellow American citizens that I'll never meet that this option is
available to you. If you ever find yourself walking a mile in my shoes, I
hope that you would at least be given the same choice and that no one
tries to take it from you.
When my suffering
becomes too great, I can say to all those I love, "I love you; come be
by my side, and come say goodbye as I pass into whatever's next." I will
die upstairs in my bedroom with my husband, mother, stepfather and best
friend by my side and pass peacefully. I can't imagine trying to rob
anyone else of that choice.
cnn.
