Mom fights for right to die on her own terms
Note: Christy O’Donnell passed away at her home on February 6, 2016 after receiving hospice care. California’s End of Life Option Act was signed into law in 2015, but had yet to take effect at the time of O’Donnell’s passing.
A California mother who has been lobbying the state for the right to die says she was speechless when she heard the news that Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation giving terminally ill patients the ability to end their lives on their own terms. “I knew it would happen but I didn’t know it would happen in my lifetime,” says Christy O’Donnell who was diagnosed with terminal cancer last year. “To know that other kids like my daughter will not have to suffer — that is the greatest gift anyone could give me.”
O’Donnell has outlived her initial prognosis of only a few months. Yahoo global news anchor Katie Couric spoke with her in June about her condition. “If my liver fails, my stomach will become huge, painful, and distended. “And with the bone tumors, there’s not really any medication they can give me that’s going to take away the pain.” O’Donnell says she’s also at risk of dying of her lung tumor, which will essentially cause her to drown in her own fluids. “I grew up in Hawaii surfing,” she says. “I’ve been held down a long time. I know what that feels like, and to think about experiencing that scares me to death.” O’Donnell says she doesn’t want her death to be traumatic for her or her 21-year-old daughter, Bailey. “My biggest fear about my last moments on Earth are that … I’m going to be in so much physical pain that it’s going to make my passing traumatic for me and traumatic for my daughter,” she says. “And that the whole rest of her life, her last moments of looking at me, touching me, and hearing my voice are going to be a horrible, terrible memory that she’s going to have to carry, rather than it being a loving memory of me.”
Brown said he signed the legislation after conversations with a Catholic bishop and two of his own doctors. State lawmakers passed the bill last month. A previous version failed earlier this year despite the highly publicized case of O’Donnell and Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old California woman with brain cancer who moved to Oregon to end her life. The measure was brought back as part of a special session intended to address funding shortfalls for Medi-Cal, the state’s health insurance program for the poor. The bill includes requirements that patients be physically capable of taking the medication themselves, that two doctors approve it, that the patients submit several written requests and that there be two witnesses, one of whom is not a family member.
