I have to admit it Brittany Maynard's story gets me. I am writing this with a lot of sadness. She is 29 years old and by all accounts loves life and she had just gotten married, she also has a beautiful dog and a loving mother. Her dying wish and cause she is working on is to give others the chance to chose how they will live the last days of their lives. She makes an eloquent case for her choice to not be called suicide. I agree and further I would say she is not dying with dignity she is living with dignity.
Terminal diseases can end your life long before you die. Your personality can change from being in constant pain and from being on pain management medications. You need to have constant care from nurses and doctors. You can't do the things that you love to do. There is not much that resembles a functional and enjoyable life. Brittany is living her life right up to the moment it no longer resembles a life. When the pain is too much and outweighs the benefits of life she is going to succumb to the cancer that is killing her. She isn't hastening her death. The fact that she is going to die happened when cancer started ravaging her brain and a tumor gave her headaches so bad she sought medical treatment leading to the discovery of the tumor that is killing her. She was given a six month prognosis of death and she chose a date close to that time. She may as she says push the date farther back if she isn't in extreme pain. Good for her she doesn't have to keep the date it is a calculated date based on her prognosis. Sometimes doctors are off a bit and that is alright there is no calendar under the microscope, just a view of damaged cells.
Brittany has given a face to terminal illness. She has helped an unknown number of people to eventually have the right to live with dignity, to choose. That is what a life with dignity is the ability to make choices. It is one of the first urges we have as humans. The terrible two's are all about a child wanting to make choices. It is when the parents and families needs, wants, wisdom, and experience often baffle the young child and they just want what they want. Life is a series of choices if we are lucky. We will try to choose the thing that makes us the happiest either in the short term or long term. Often we are wrong, but that isn't near as devastating as not being able to make the choice at all. Brittany did not choose to get a brain tumor. She didn't choose for it to be terminal and make dying at an appointed time look like a better option than a slower lingering painful death at which time she has already lost the capacity to recognize the people she loves. She wants to be with and be fully engaged with life. At some point in the near future she will have lost that. She will have lost more and more of her ability to choose for herself as the disease progresses. She will not be able to choose doing the things she loves or choose to be with the people she loves as these things are not possible in a nursing home or hospice. They just aren't. You don't make choices when you are in extreme pain the only thing you do is manage the pain if possible or feel the pain and nothing else. This is not living with dignity in so many ways it's not living, it's dancing with death waiting for the final twirl as death takes in it's arms and bends you backwards for a final look at life upside down. Then the curtain falls and leaves devastation in it's wake. Brittany wants to be with her family for that final dance to be fully engaged as she passes to live with dignity up to the very last minute.
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