maynard’s choice

Today was the day. Today was the day Brittany Maynard’s family and friends were to begin life without her. Today was to be the beginning of her surrender… and of, her family’s grief. Allow me to provide some brief background info, as shared by Brittany herself…

On New Year’s Day, after months of suffering from debilitating headaches, I learned that I had brain cancer. I was 29 years old. I’d been married for just over a year. My husband and I were trying for a family.

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. 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.

Brittany moved to Oregon, obtained the prescription, and after finishing her so-called “bucket list,” planned on dying yesterday, November 1st. Brittany, however, changed her mind. She remains alive today.

Let me thus add a few thoughts and questions. Please perceive no judgment; there is none. I have no idea what it would feel like to be in Brittany’s shoes. Walking in her shoes, however, does not lessen my emotion nor question.

Brittany says she changed her mind because she “still feels good enough”… “I still have enough joy and I still laugh and smile with my family and friends.” She also is still “reserving the right” to die on her own terms.

I can’t imagine being Brittany. I can’t imagine the sobriety that encounters her every day, the sobriety so many of us fail to face as it’s so easy to take a month or minute or moment for granted.

Amidst all the heartache, within Brittany’s seizing of the moment, there is a wisdom so many of us miss. Brittany makes me want to take nothing for granted.

More questions directed to this articulate young woman and her heartbreaking situation… why exactly did you change your mind? With circumstances the same, why have you decided to currently live? What keeps you here?  What do you think happens next? Do you know God? Do you trust him? Can he comfort you? Can he help you die with dignity? What will be the first conversation after death you have with God?

I have no answers this day… no judgment either… I am walking away, just hugging my family and friends right now… really tight.

Respectfully…

AR

[NOTE:  At 9:35 p.m. EST on Sunday, Nov. 2nd, long after this column was posted, USA Today reported that Brittany did indeed end her life.  USA TODAY Network is awaiting further details.  Rest in peace, Brittany. ]