Terminally Ill Woman Brittany Maynard Has Ended Her Own Life

[mystery-ak]

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20868349,00.html?xid=socialflow_facebook_peoplemag

BY NICOLE WEISENSEE EGAN @nweisenseeegan 11/02/2014 AT 07:35 PM EST

Brittany Maynard, who became the public face of the controversial right-to-die movement over the last few weeks, ended her own life Saturday at her home in Portland, Oregon. She was 29.

"Goodbye to all my dear friends and family that I love. Today is the day I have chosen to pass away with dignity in the face of my terminal illness, this terrible brain cancer that has taken so much from me … but would have taken so much more," she wrote on Facebook. "The world is a beautiful place, travel has been my greatest teacher, my close friends and folks are the greatest givers. I even have a ring of support around my bed as I type … Goodbye world. Spread good energy. Pay it forward!"

Doctors told Maynard she had six months to live last spring after she was diagnosed with a likely stage 4 glioblastoma. She made headlines around the world when she announced she intended to die – under Oregon's Death with Dignity Act – by taking a fatal dose of barbiturates, prescribed to her by a doctor, when her suffering became too great.

"My glioblastoma is going to kill me and that's out of my control," she told PEOPLE last month. "I've discussed with many experts how I would die from it and it's a terrible, terrible way to die. So being able to choose to go with dignity is less terrifying."

On Oct. 6, she launched an online video campaign with Compassion & Choices, an end-of-life choice advocacy organization, to fight for expanding death with dignity laws nationwide.

"For people to argue against this choice for sick people really seems evil to me," she told PEOPLE. "They try to mix it up with suicide and that's really unfair, because there's not a single part of me that wants to die. But I am dying."



continued...

[EC]

May she be at peace. May her family find peace and comfort.

[olde north church]

Life ain't easy.

[alicewonders]

She died on her own terms and faced her death with dignity.  May she rest in peace.

[truth_seeker]

I believe she should have the right to minimize her own suffering. It is her business.

[DCPatriot]

May she be at peace. May her family find peace and comfort.

Amen, Mark!  Amen!

[Scottftlc]

I pray she is at peace and knows endless love.

[massadvj]

As most of you know, I have a wife with life-threatening ovarian cancer.  I often joke that my wife has the "Joanne gets whatever she wants" disease.  So often, we are faced with situations with no good choices.  And so the "Joanne gets what she wants" rule applies.  It also applies to every other decision, such as where we should go to dinner or what movie we should see.

If we ever get to the point that my wife wants to terminate her struggle, the rule would apply in that situation as well.

[jmyrlefuller]

It was pretty obvious from the tone of everything I've read about her situation that she had lost all hope long before this point.

I'm reminded of the situation with Valerie Harper. She, too, was diagnosed with incurable terminal cancer and given only a few months to live. She decided to try chemotherapy. One year later, she's still alive and doing well. Now, that's not to say that's what would have happened with Maynard, but if she truly wanted to live, it would have been worth a shot.

[240B]

OD on pain killers not a bad way to go. My father in law was dying and he had an abnormal fear of death. I mean we are all afraid of death to some degree, but his fear was extreme and abnormal. He spent almost all of the family wealth, which would have gone to his wife and children, on wacko cures in Mexico, Sweden, and all over the world.
 
Bottom line is, he built up such a tolerance for pain killers, and his pain was so great, that they no longer worked on him. He went out from this world screaming so loud the entire floor could hear him. He went out fighting and hanging on until the last second screaming in pain. What a way to go.
 
It was a lesson to me. When it is time, it is time. Fighting it too much only makes it worse. In my opinion, what she did was the right and dignified thing to do. There is no way to measure how much pain and suffering she saved herself. And she saved her family and those close to her the sever trauma having to endure the pain with her.

[Lando Lincoln]

Odd set of feelings for me - but none of them are judgmental.  I, too, pray she is at peace.

[alicewonders]

OD on pain killers not a bad way to go. My father in law was dying and he had an abnormal fear of death. I mean we are all afraid of death to some degree, but his fear was extreme and abnormal. He spent almost all of the family wealth, which would have gone to his wife and children, on wacko cures in Mexico, Sweden, and all over the world.
 
Bottom line is, he built up such a tolerance for pain killers, and his pain was so great, that they no longer worked on him. He went out from this world screaming so loud the entire floor could hear him. He went out fighting and hanging on until the last second screaming in pain. What a way to go.
 
It was a lesson to me. When it is time, it is time. Fighting it too much only makes it worse. In my opinion, what she did was the right and dignified thing to do. There is no way to measure how much pain and suffering she saved herself. And she saved her family and those close to her the sever trauma having to endure the pain with her.

Well said, I agree.

[mystery-ak]

Odd set of feelings for me - but none of them are judgmental.  I, too, pray she is at peace.

Me too....

[xfreeper]

It was pretty obvious from the tone of everything I've read about her situation that she had lost all hope long before this point.

I'm reminded of the situation with Valerie Harper. She, too, was diagnosed with incurable terminal cancer and given only a few months to live. She decided to try chemotherapy. One year later, she's still alive and doing well. Now, that's not to say that's what would have happened with Maynard, but if she truly wanted to live, it would have been worth a shot.

how do you know she had that option?

[Oceander]

It was pretty obvious from the tone of everything I've read about her situation that she had lost all hope long before this point.

I'm reminded of the situation with Valerie Harper. She, too, was diagnosed with incurable terminal cancer and given only a few months to live. She decided to try chemotherapy. One year later, she's still alive and doing well. Now, that's not to say that's what would have happened with Maynard, but if she truly wanted to live, it would have been worth a shot.

Glioblastoma doesn't seem to be particularly susceptible to current chemotherapy; it exists for it, but prognosis isn't good:  http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/283252-treatment


My father's second wife went through cancer three times, and the third time she simply couldn't deal with the pain and ravages of chemotherapy.  She opted for palliative care only, God bless her.

[Free Vulcan]

It all sounds so good, and it will become a normal thing. Then the govt will get in on it and we won't be making the decisions anymore, kind of like the Dutch like to do. Then things start to look alot like Logan's Run.

Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

[Luis Gonzalez]

It all sounds so good, and it will become a normal thing. Then the govt will get in on it and we won't be making the decisions anymore, kind of like the Dutch like to do. Then things start to look alot like Logan's Run.

Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

If we, as a society, believe that we have the right to terminate an individual's life as punishment for a crime, then why wouldn't individuals have the equal right to decide when to terminate their own lives?

[jmyrlefuller]

how do you know she had that option?

From what I read about the situation, she was given a range of options. The first, which is usually standard, is a straight "remove the tumor" operation—which she did. The problem with such operations is that usually the cancer comes back, and in a much more scattered, widespread form that is much more difficult to treat. She was indeed given the choices of radiation and/or chemotherapy, which would have probably at least slowed the disease's progress. Based on whatever information she was getting from the doctors and/or her reading up on it, she determined that it wasn't worth the side effects if it wasn't certain to work. If she was going to die, she might as well get what she wanted done while she still could—and then die.

Some people are strange like that. I knew a friend of a friend who had cystic fibrosis from the time she was born. She made it to her 20s and decided that she was called to be a missionary in Africa, knowing full well of the risks of that kind of work for a woman in her condition. She miraculously survived the first missionary journey, but sure enough, on the second one, she died. She would have rather lived while she was alive and live a shorter life than live a sedentary life under constant medical treatment, even if it were to be a longer one.

[olde north church]

As mentioned on my signature, I had a bleed in my brain, for all intents and purposes, a hemorrhagic stroke.  My wife and I don't discuss it much, I bring it up more often out of curiosity for what happened while I was checked out.  One of the few times my wife brought it up, it was in a discussion about death/dying.  She said how I would have died would have been good for her.  Relatively painless and unaware.  I don't remember any of it except for talking to the cat we had to put down about 6 weeks earlier, nothing more.  A couple of visits from friends when I was briefly awake.
An individual shouldn't be required to wait upon the whim of a some deity for the end of life.  THAT is cruel and unusual.  If you want to take what time you have left to write your memoirs, learn the intricacies of puppetry or spend your life savings to buy a 500 car and race it into a wall, that's your business.
How many other people diagnosed with Valerie Harper's condition are no longer with us?  1?  100?  1000?  The difference is, Valerie Harper made the choice SHE wanted.
I went to TOS to check out what the feeling was over there.  I could have gone to the primate wing and seen less dung flung.

[MACVSOG68]

ONC wrote:

I went to TOS to check out what the feeling was over there.  I could have gone to the primate wing and seen less dung flung.

Yes I also went over there to see if possibly they've changed at all.  Hardly.  Several threads, but anyone who wished Ms. Maynard peace was promptly told how evil she was, will burn in hell, crammed full of leftist ideology, etc., etc., etc.  For a while I almost thought I was on North Korean News.  To call some of those people on TOS nasty would be an insult to the word. 

[DCPatriot]

Yes I also went over there to see if possibly they've changed at all.  Hardly.  Several threads, but anyone who wished Ms. Maynard peace was promptly told how evil she was, will burn in hell, crammed full of leftist ideology, etc., etc., etc.  For a while I almost thought I was on North Korean News.  To call some of those people on TOS nasty would be an insult to the word.

And they're clueless that they are used as an example of what defines a Conservative.  So sad....

[olde north church]

Yes I also went over there to see if possibly they've changed at all.  Hardly.  Several threads, but anyone who wished Ms. Maynard peace was promptly told how evil she was, will burn in hell, crammed full of leftist ideology, etc., etc., etc.  For a while I almost thought I was on North Korean News.  To call some of those people on TOS nasty would be an insult to the word.

I guess that's what makes us conservative though, believing people can change.  They consider themselves to be "Christian".  I really think the trolls have taken over there and just try to outdo each other and put a conservative or Christian stamp on it.

[MACVSOG68]

And they're clueless that they are used as an example of what defines a Conservative.  So sad....

I've spent time here defending "social conservatives" as a necessary and integral part of the GOP base, but after seeing those threads over there, I'm not so sure.  I'm envisioning the kinds of laws they might enact should they ever gain power. 

[alicewonders]

As mentioned on my signature, I had a bleed in my brain, for all intents and purposes, a hemorrhagic stroke.  My wife and I don't discuss it much, I bring it up more often out of curiosity for what happened while I was checked out.  One of the few times my wife brought it up, it was in a discussion about death/dying.  She said how I would have died would have been good for her.  Relatively painless and unaware.  I don't remember any of it except for talking to the cat we had to put down about 6 weeks earlier, nothing more.  A couple of visits from friends when I was briefly awake.
An individual shouldn't be required to wait upon the whim of a some deity for the end of life.  THAT is cruel and unusual.  If you want to take what time you have left to write your memoirs, learn the intricacies of puppetry or spend your life savings to buy a 500 car and race it into a wall, that's your business.
How many other people diagnosed with Valerie Harper's condition are no longer with us?  1?  100?  1000?  The difference is, Valerie Harper made the choice SHE wanted.
I went to TOS to check out what the feeling was over there.  I could have gone to the primate wing and seen less dung flung.

God gives us power over our own destiny. 

Before Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge, they were as innocent as a newborn baby.  I suppose if they'd never eaten from it, they would still be innocent pastoral creatures living an idyllic life. 

But once we gained knowledge, God said - "Okay, you have knowledge - make the best of it.  From here on out, you will survive by your hard labor and your wits.  How your life ends up - is up to you.  I'm here for you if you need me - to provide comfort, support, strength, guidance - and most importantly - forgiveness and love.  Call on me whenever you want to.  I'm listening.  I love you."

God is not going to damn you if you make a reasoned choice that it is better for everyone concerned (yourself too) if you die SOONER rather than LATER.  That is a death with dignity.  Not saying the other choice is wrong either - if you want to stay as long as you can and fight it with every fiber of your being - that's your choice too.

I have Irish, Scottish, English and a bit of Cherokee blood in me - my people are natural fighters, even against all the odds.  There's nothing wrong with that. We need fighters sometimes.

 

[alicewonders]

I've spent time here defending "social conservatives" as a necessary and integral part of the GOP base, but after seeing those threads over there, I'm not so sure.  I'm envisioning the kinds of laws they might enact should they ever gain power. 

You have totalitarians and authoritarians in every ideology, unfortunately.  They seem to be the most passionate of their respective parties - the loudest and most obnoxious.  It does hurt to be lumped in with people like that.  Doesn't hurt that the media makes the right's extremists look like kooks, while they make the left's extremists as selfless givers of themselves fighting for a cause.

I do think that some of the worst voices at TOS are probably trolls.