![]() But when it comes to taking your own life, the rules and social stigma are different. Everest, even create or not create another human in it. You know, you have the right to do all sorts of things to your body-tattoo it, force it to climb Mt. ![]() ![]() LEAH: But even with the full support of her family and doctors, this was a really difficult and controversial process. So Brittany and her husband moved to Oregon where she began the qualifying process, which included getting doctors to declare her terminally ill and mentally competent. When it passed in 1994, Oregon became the first state to legalize medical aid in dying, also known as physician-assisted suicide. Brittany learned of Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act, which enables terminally ill patients to essentially orchestrate and schedule their own death. LAURA: And so she decided to her own take life-or death, rather-into her own hands. My quality of life, as I knew it, would be gone.” My scalp would be left covered with first-degree burns. I read about the side effects: The hair on my scalp would have been singed off. As she wrote: “Because my tumor is so large, doctors prescribed full brain radiation. Treatment to possibly extend the remainder of her life didn’t really appeal to her. As journalist Katherine Seligman reported in a story we published in 2015-we’ll include the link in the show notes-Brittany immediately jumped into action, learning everything she could about the disease, the prognosis, and, importantly, her options for how to spend her last months. LEAH: So it was no longer a question of if the cancer would kill her, but when. When she woke up from a surgery to remove it, she received even worse news: The tumor had become more aggressive, and she had at most 6 months to live. But then, on New Year’s Day, Brittany’s doctor diagnosed her with a malignant brain tumor. She’d graduated from Berkeley’s psychology department a few years earlier, and had been married to another Cal grad for just over a year. LAURA: In the fall of 2014, a healthy, 29-year-old woman named Brittany Maynard started getting some really bad headaches. Art by Michiko Toki and original music by Mogli Maureal. Special thanks to Pat Joseph, Maddy Weinberg, Nathalia Alcantara, Charlie Pike, Ruth Dixon-Mueller, and Dr. This episode was written and hosted by Laura Smith and Leah Worthington and produced by Coby McDonald. Lonny Shavelson’s legacy as California’s leading medical aid in dying practitioner Katherine Seligman’s story about Brittany Maynard.As life-expectancy and palliative care improve, we face new questions: Under what circumstances are people allowed to choose when and how they die? And how might rethinking the conversation and practices around death change our very conception of it? To find out, Laura and Leah speak with California’s leading end-of-life doctor and a healthy octogenarian who plans to quit while she’s ahead. And yet public support of the practice is high. Subscribe, and continue listening to The Edge on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.įive years after 29-year-old, terminally ill Brittany Maynard makes national news by choosing to end her life early, medically assisted death continues to face enormous legal and social barriers.
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