Posted on 10/07/2014 7:03:22 AM PDT by Borges
A terminally ill 29-year-old woman has chosen November 1 as the day she will die.
Shortly after her wedding in 2013, Brittany Maynard of Portland, Ore., began experiencing debilitating headaches.
While on vacation with her husband in January, Brittany was diagnosed with grade II Astrocytoma, a severe brain tumor. Doctors told her she had 10 years left to live.
“I have to tell you,” she says in the video, “when you’re 29 years old, being told you have that kind of timeline still feels like being told you’re going to die tomorrow.”
Following the original diagnosis, doctors said her cancer had progressed to Glioblastoma multiforme, the deadliest form of brain cancer. After treatment, the average life expectancy is only 14 months.
When doctors told Brittany her death would likely be slow and painful as the tumor continued to grow, she opted to choose her own ending.
On November 1, surrounded by her husband, mother and best friend, she will end her life using medication prescribed by her doctor.
Maynard’s husband’s birthday is October 30.
The medication will give her a “peaceful and painless” ending to her life. However, Brittany said this is not a suicide.
“There is not a cell in my body that is suicidal or that wants to die,” Maynard told People.com. “I want to live. I wish there was a cure for my disease but there’s not. … Being able to choose to go with dignity is less terrifying.”
Maynard’s family moved with her to Oregon earlier this year so she would have access to Oregon’s “Death with Dignity Act,” which has allowed over 750 people to die using medication since 1997.
Life-rights advocacy organization Compassion & Choices and The Brittany Maynard Fund will provide Brittany a platform to share her story and bring attention to the end-of-life rights.
According to Compassion & Choices, Brittany will spend her last days fighting for others’ rights to end their lives.
On of my wife’s cousins has GBM IV... found out two days before his daughter was born. That was nearly two years ago... but what hell he as gone through in two years... and I think he is getting closer to the end now... constantly in the hospital with infections and a myriad of complication, he is on so many different medicines he doesn’t even recognize his own children... he is just 32.
They give you “medication” to kill you now? The bambulance chaser should like this one.
The solution is not a good one. The results on the other side can be ghastly.
Horrorshow way to die.
Why is this news? Families privately make decisions like this all the time.
Would this be a mortal sin in God’s eyes? If you’re going to die anyways?
I am going to go out on a limb here and lean towards yes. Jesus suffered for us. To not suffer your final hours and die as He intended, would that not be unforgivable? However, we are all sinners and no where close to as Holy as Jesus is. In this life, we can never be.
Wow November 1 is my birthday. Wow so sad, very beautiful woman my prayers go with her. I’m surprised though that the doctor can give her “medication” to end her life. Actually the best way to go is to inhale pure nitrogen. It makes you feel light headed and giddy and you won’t feel anything.
So sad in so many ways. Lovely girl in that pic.
I would not let my husband go.
This one is heartbreaking but understandable.
PLEASE stand back and let her implement her decision, Stateist busybodies...
They have a kind of idiot-arithmetic approach to treatment of patients, consisting mainly of subtraction.
>>I would not let my husband go.<<
Letting go is the hard part.
two kids 5 and 2... and a young wife. My wife knows he is almost done... and she is so sad all the time. Having been through chemo myself I cant imagine going through all that.. and STILL losing the fight...
The decision of when you die is God’s to make, not yours. I have to respectfully disagree with you. People should not be given a decision between dying naturally and committing suicide. Miracles happen, and life is sacred. You should grasp at it like a man stumbling over a cliff grasps to the roots of one clump of grass. He knows that it cannot possibly hold, but he tries anyways, hoping against all hope that a miracle will occur knowing the clump will not save him, but delay his fate.
Thing is, miracles do happen.
I am grateful that my father chose to live while he could, otherwise I would have lost those last precious weeks with him. He was very brave, even though it was scary to face. This is not a condemnation of those who choose otherwise. After helping to care for dad, I would not choose a premature death for myself if faced with cancer of any kind.
On November 1, surrounded by her husband, mother and best friend, she will end her life using medication prescribed by her doctor
...
Is she suffering now? How much longer would she have if she doesn’t end her life.
And that's the issue at hand. Like homosexual "marriage", Liberals will demand everyone must set aside the moral implications and focus exclusively on the emotional aspect of the equation. That is wrong. Dead wrong. And it opens the door even wider to doing whatever somebody wants as long as it "feels" right.
Again, this is how we continue the process, well underway, of societal devolution and decoupling society from any morals whatsoever. In the end, there is no right or wrong, it is only whatever is right in one's own eyes.
This line of reasoning denies our God-designed and innate moral code.
It is wrong.
I don’t think so. It’s more of a sin to try and extend life when it’s not viable to do so, meaning that spending tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars when your condition is inevitably terminal.
It’s better to get your affairs in order and do some amount of good in your final days and just keep yourself comfortable until the end.
“To not suffer your final hours and die as He intended”
Your reasoning would make anyone who has hospice care, guilty of the unforgivable. It’s ridiculous.
And if that doesn't make you pause, think about a medical insurance company -- or government bureaucracy -- that has a huge financial interest in seeing this woman die quickly.
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