Terminally ill woman, 29, chooses to die two days after husband’s birthday

http://wgntv.com/2014/10/07/terminally-ill-woman-29-chooses-to-die-two-days-after-husbands-birthday/ ^ | 10/7/2014

[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.

[Ronaldus Magnus]

Both my mother and then later my stepmother died of Glioblastoma Multiforme. This disease takes everything from a person: their health, their looks, their freedom, their memory, and eventually their intellect. Although this condition is terrible, I am very thankful for every moment I had with each of them until the end naturally came. Despite all of the suffering and humiliation that a terminal illness puts everyone involved through, I know that both of them were also thankful for every moment they had too.

[Obadiah]

Absolutely spot on.

[Jonty30]

Sorry. I don’t believe in continuing to live if your medical condition has developed to a point where all you can do is scream in pain 24/7.

You might recommend bumping up the morphine until you can’t feel anything and continue to function, but I don’t differentiate between being hopped up on morphine to the point of where you are in a living dead state and being dead.

[BuckeyeTexan]

To not suffer your final hours and die as He intended, would that not be unforgivable?

If that were so, then God's promise in John 3:16-18 (NIV) would be a lie.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.

God's Word is either Holy and true or it is a lie. Believers are forgiven for their sins or they are condemned.

All of believers' sins are forgiven but one.

Matthew 12:31-32 NIV - And so I tell you, every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.

[Theophilus]

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.

I hate these weasel words. Why not wait and see, enjoy her time with her husband and have unlimited access to the full spectrum of narcotics that modern science can provide? We all know darn well that there is plenty of stuff that can take her to oblivion and if she wakes up in an iota of unbearable pain, she can go right back until the end.

If I were in that situation, I'd tell the doctors, do the most radical thing you can to me, take half my brain if you want, do anything that has the remotest chance of working and lets try to advance the science.

[freedumb2003]

>>No, the decision is God’s alone. You get zero input and you have no right to even think about bargaining with God’s will.<<

That is between the individual and his/her relationship with God. Neither you nor I nor the State nor anyone else get a say in that discussion.

[freedumb2003]

>>Well, no. A third party has now been introduced into your “decision to die”: a medical facility and staff who are going to help kill this woman. <<

So a building owner is a “third party” when a person jumps of the roof?

>>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.<<

Please provide any article supporting this tired “slippery slope” assertion.

[freedumb2003]

Ignore the Gosnells and the serial abortion women, ignore the tattooed ex-convicts that cross our borders.

The Gosnells?

[spel_grammer_an_punct_polise]

I am hoping and praying that as November 1st approaches she will slowly change her mind.

[wideawake]

It may be tough, but let's not subscribe to the lie that this isn't a suicide.

It is.

[verga]

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.

My thoughts exactly.

[verga]

Is it really any different than a DNR decision?P>Actually it is the exact opposite .DNR/ DNI is allowing God to make the decision with out interference from man. Death occurs and you do not engage in any activity to reverse it. It is natural.

Her choice is suicide. Self Murder a violation of the fifth commandment.

[verga]

Your analogy is faulty. you are arguing against the double effect. You do not jump on the grenade to kill yourself. You do it to save the life of another.

Same with your other example. While it is impossible to know what was in the heart or mind of anyone that jumped. I am willing to bet that at least some of them were jumping to save their lives. Hoping for a miracle.

[truth_seeker]

“People should not be given a decision between dying naturally and committing suicide.”

So you want a government that is big enough, and powerful enough, to enforce your own opinion on others?

[gdani]

I don’t differentiate between being hopped up on morphine to the point of where you are in a living dead state and being dead.

I don't either. Waiting around to die is not living.

[Chickensoup]

People have been keeping family members “comfortable” for years. This is a way to provide comfort without concerns about respiratory status or cardiac status of a patient, which would hasten death.

[nuconvert]

Excuse me. You would benefit from reading prior posts. Then you'd discover that my argument is with FreedomStar3028 saying that “ “To not suffer your final hours and die as He intended” was ridiculous and that it should be amended if he/she is strictly talking about suicide.

BTW - More to your point..... it has been my observation on more than one occasion, that what hospice does is to continually increase the dosage of morphine until the patient succumbs. Something you might want to think about....

[Chickensoup]

The old method of patients and families making decisions about care without government intrusion is falling by the way because healthcare workers are becoming an arm of the government.

[nuconvert]

Thank you. I appreciate it. He fought a brave fight.

[GoldwaterChick]

I believe that was a 90 year old grandmother who needed a pacemaker—she obtained it from the 3rd or 4th surgeon and was still alive several years later.

When our doctor questioned me on Obama’s comment, I found the video of him actually making that statement and e-mailed it to him. Pain pills don’t do anything to regulate heartbeat but as usual, Obama had absolutely no clue about it—just like everything else.