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.
In some cases, personal guilt is mitigated because the person is too depressed or too mentally compromised to make a rational choice. But this girl -- if the article is to be relied upon ---is making the choice in full possession of her mental faculties.
I believe this is wrong because God does bestow upon the dying, blessings of insight and grace, remembrance and repentance for past sins, the lessons learned by declining bodily strength, and helplessness, being cast entirely upon dependence upon God: the very things she is determined to avoid.
These can be difficult but soul-transforming experiences. To accept them requires faith. To reject them is faithlessness. She needs our prayers very much: for real, let's pray for her.
Our society is far from wisdom. She has been badly misled.
May this poor girl --- I do feel very sorry for her --- receive the mercy of God.
As I said to another FReeper:
Drug-suicide administered by a medico is legal in Oregon.
They have a kind of idiot-arithmetic approach to treatment of patients, consisting mainly of subtraction.
--------------------------->
I have heard of Burzinski's successes and the gov't hounding him and trying to shut him down.
I think I'll google him up.
Thanks for jarring my memory!
Her cancer progressed and she was re-diagnosed.
14 months becoming progressively more painful and difficult.
Ah, then jumping on a grenade to save your buddies is also wrong?
Two kids, 2 and 5, watching mom die from slow torture? She donates her organs, to the extent that she can under the circumstances and where are you?
It’s why God makes the call in these cases.
Or, put another way:
You are on the 87th floor of the WTC Tower 2. Smoke and fire are filling the space. You are only able to breathe because you’ve broken out the window facing West, and you are calling out for help to the firefighters below. It’s hard to hear you because there are others doing the exact same thing you are.
Is it God’s will you remain in the building and burn to death, or is jumping the coward’s way out?
Suicide is wrong, not difficult. the left’s agenda of death is wrong, you made your views on it pretty clear.
You posted the thread and started it off with trying to set a theme of defending her suicide.
You do not have the right to end your own life just because you want to and think it will be easier than suffering. Christ suffered, that’s all you need to know.
I was committed to killing myself before my 18th birthday and would have done it if any means became available. I just hated my life and didn't have anything physically wrong with me.
Then some folks talked about the Bible and I decided to prove it wrong and then do it. But the more I read, I found that God was loving people over and over again in it's pages and to Love your enemies and to do good to them. I couldn't find any fault.
Then I read how Jesus loved me by going to the cross for me for all my mistakes and all my failures. It broke my hard heart and decided to Live because of Him. Not to suicide, but to live because of His love for me. I threw away all my sins upon Him and decided to follow Him because He was worthy and to try not to follow myself anymore.
And whenever I get blue, I know to ask love from Him to enable me to do His wonderful will. This He has answered Graciously and in Abundance time and time again. Proving to me that 'Love is from God' (just as the Apostle John said).
Suicide is not the way that leads to abundant and eternal life - the Savior Jesus is. And if you ask Him into your heart humbly, you will find out that He is.
SR
In my father’s case it was tuberculosis.
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I do think suicide is wrong. Why don’t you argue with someone on this thread who disagrees with you. The story is difficult to take in.
The fact that suicide is a moral wrong is what stopped you. Did legality have anything to do with it?
As with acceptance of God, all men have free will. It is only through free will that we are able to accept grace.
There is an aphorism in the law: Tough cases make bad law.
No it didn't. It was God's love freely given that stopped me. Nothing in me would have.
Doubleplusungood
But my point is that it was not human law.
My father was diagnosed with a brain tumor and was given 6 weeks. We all knew he had been “off” for about 8 months prior to that but it was mainly his feeling like he had a flu and no energy. It wasn’t until after he had what appeared to be a stroke that it was finally diagnosed.
The first 4 weeks he was perfectly fine, except for the loss of facial muscles on his right side of his face. He was a retired Army officer (WWII, Korea, and Vietnam) and he had us all marching around preparing things for the inevitable. Week 5 he was down more than up but was still aware of his self and the needs of his family. Middle of the 6th week he went down real fast. I gave him his last bath and I recall putting him back in bed and him just feeling so comfortable and thankful for that. I kissed him and told him I loved him. that was the last time I saw him alive. He passed 2 days later.
He was the toughest man I knew and he would never allow anyone to know how much pain he was actually in.
Once again FReepers are all over the map here in their "for" and "against" responses to this woman's decision.
We believe there are Moral Absolutes, right? Sometimes it seems so hard to define them.
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Laws against it will be futile; the enemy wants His breakfast. God has mercy and compassion on some; snatching them from the fire. Such was that He had for me; unworthy and having nothing to now commend. All praise belongs to Him; as it always has.
I hear you. So sad.
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