Head to Head: Dying with dignity

If you haven’t heard about the Death with Dignity Act in Oregon, you may have heard about Brittany Maynard; a 29-year-old who was diagnosed with stage four glioblastoma brain cancer, and was told she had six months to live. Maynard dealt with seizures, headaches, loss of balance and even became forgetful of her husband’s name, so she decided to end her life with as much health as she could keep.

Maynard did not plan on ending her life after she found out about her prognosis. Instead she made sure to keep her family, friends, and loved ones close and tell them how much they meant to her; she fulfilled experiences she wanted to check off her bucket list before she died. It wasn’t until after a severe seizure that Maynard decided it was time for her to use the Death with Dignity Act in Oregon. She took a lethal dose of doctor-prescribed sedatives and respiratory-system depressants that ended her suffering Saturday.

Supporters have said they are glad she is no longer suffering and free of the pain from the disease, and others who believe she should not have been allowed to take her own life and believe that the doctor involved helped “murder” her. However, the Death with Dignity Act in Oregon states that terminally-ill Oregonians can “end their lives through the voluntary self-administration of lethal medications, expressly prescribed by a physician for that purpose.”

Whether you believe it is right or wrong is your own opinion and you are entitled to that. For me, however, having had a distant cousin, an uncle, and a very close family friend diagnosed with this same type of brain cancer, I know the different ways a person can suffer from it. I was young when my cousin was diagnosed and unfortunately, he did not win the fight against brain cancer. Before he died, he became moody, often angry, and forgetful. Our family friend was diagnosed in summer of 2013 and lost her battle with brain cancer in May. Two weeks after she was diagnosed with brain cancer, so was my uncle, the exact same type of cancer. I followed their progress and stayed in touch with member of their close family to check how they were doing. As my uncle underwent surgery and chemo treatments, my family saw that he was going to fight it with everything he had and he would not give up. Our family friend, though she did not just give up, eventually accepted that she was going to die and began to make arrangements for after she died.

There is a difference between the two, our family friend did not have surgery, to my knowledge, and simply did chemo and took medicine to ease the pain of the disease. I worked with her the summer she was diagnosed and have known her since I was a child. I noticed changes such as memory loss, loss of balance, and she would often space out and forget what she was doing. It also took longer for her diagnosis since the doctors were not sure what to look for at first, as her symptoms could have been many different diagnoses. My uncle was diagnosed shortly after losing his balance and being taken to the hospital. He had surgery and has undergone chemotherapy treatment and medicine to keep the tumors for coming back or growing into cancerous tumors again. So far he has been able to fight it off and all has been well on his check-ups.

After watching first-hand, two very dear people to my heart fight the same battle and only one was able to keep fighting, I can agree with Maynard’s decision to end her suffering. She did not simply roll over and quit one day. She accepted that she was going to eventually die, but wanted to end losing her memory, having seizures, and suffering every day. Maynard was quoted by NBC News; “Not everybody has to agree that it’s the right thing, because they don’t have to do it. And it’s an option that for me has provided a lot of relief, because the way that my brain cancer would take me organically is very terrible.”

People will argue that her decision was wrong and she should have fought through it. I agree with Maynard and fully support her decision to die and remember her loved ones and end the pain before it consumed her completely and she died slowly and painfully. The Death with Dignity Act is only for terminally-ill patients who are not going to survive their illness and is only prescribed when the patient asks for it. This is not an easy decision for anyone and, not being in her shoes, no one can say that she made the wrong or right decision. Brain cancer of any stage is a very malicious disease. Maynard made her decision on the act after living out her dreams she wanted to accomplish before dying. Sometimes people can fight through diseases and win the battle, other times they cannot. This act is in place to help the pain and suffering of terminally-ill patients who have accepted they are going to die and wish to die as much themselves before the disease takes over their body.

You might not agree with what I have to say but I need to have my side of this discussion out there.  Brittany Maynard killed herself on Saturday. Plain and simple. She killed herself. Don’t gloss that over by saying that she used the Death with Dignity Act or that she peacefully ended her life; she committed suicide. I understand that Maynard was going to suffer through the rest of her life and that it was going to be a difficult situation for both her and her family. But, in my opinion, that is not reason enough to kill yourself.

Furthermore, I am having a hard time accepting this Death with Dignity Act. Maynard killed herself; she committed suicide, and she is being praised for it. People are calling her brave, courageous, and dignified. I do not and will never believe that killing yourself is a dignified way to go.

In my short 19 years on this earth I have experienced more deaths than I would have liked. And those that I think died with the most dignity were my grandpas.

My paternal grandpa died when I was 9 years old. I do not remember a lot about his disease because I was pretty young, but I do remember that he usually lived 20 miles away from me and I was not able to spend a lot of time with him, but after his disease progressed, I was able to go see him everyday after school at the hospital. Towards the end, and for most of what I remember, my grandpa was not able to communicate with us. His motor skills were limited, and he needed to be taken care of constantly. But he was still here; he was still fighting; you could tell he still wanted to live, and he wanted to make sure his family knew he loved us. It was obvious just by looking in his eyes that he loved seeing us coming to visit him. We watched him struggle everyday, and I won’t say it was easy when he passed away, but I still would not change things. I was glad I got to spend the time with my grandpa I did, even if it was only in a hospital room with limited discussions.

The next year after my paternal grandpa died, my maternal grandpa was diagnosis with acute lymphoma cancer. The doctors told him he did not have very long to live, maybe a year. That was in 2005, I was in fifth grade. I can tell you I was able to do a report, interview, and take pictures of my grandpa about his disease for my eighth grade research project. The time that my grandpa was sick was very hard on not only him, but the rest of our family too. He struggled; he lost his mind a couple times; and it was scary. But all those bad times did not even compare to the good times we had with my grandpa. My grandpa passed away five years after his diagnosis. His death, in my opinion, was dignified because he fought, he battled, and he had little wins in the war with cancer.

When writing this article, I thought about a boy from my hometown. His name is Gage, and he has microcephalic osteodysplastic primordial dwarfism type II (MOPD type II), scoliosis, no kneecaps, no elbows, and a gastrostomy button (G-button). MOPD is a condition that causes short stature with other skeletal abnormalities and an unusually small head size. These problems show up before birth, and people with this condition will grow at a slow rate for their entire lives. Scoliosis is having a curved spine. And a G-button is a tube that people can be fed through. When Gage was born, doctors said he would not live past the age of 5. On Dec. 19, Gage will turn 13-years-old, and is living a life of dignity. I will not say that his life, and the lives of his family are easy, but I can tell you their lives are all better because Gage is a part of it. He has a hard time talking and he does not walk on his own, but I am sure no one in his family would say he is a burden to take care of.

Some people are going to agree with what Maynard did when she killed herself to “save her and her family suffering,” but death is never easy and neither is living. Life is a struggle and you are supposed to have struggles to make all the good things better. Maybe Maynard did not want her family to have to take care of her, but if she were my family I would think it was more of a lifelong burden on me that she killed herself for me. Even worse than Maynard killing herself, though, is the fact that people are calling her brave, courageous, or dignified. Death is death and when you voluntarily give up without fighting that is not dignified. You may still be yourself and you may have been yourself until the end, but when you call that dignified, it puts those who did fight and who maybe did lose part of themselves, undignified. And I will always respect and honor those who fought through their struggles and battles more than those who decide to kill themselves.

Fighting for life is dignified.