Single Mom in California Fights for Right to Die

You’ve probably heard about 29-year-old Brittany Maynard and her fight to die with dignity, after she was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. Now, another woman is fighting a similar battle.

Los Angeles attorney Christy O’Donnell filed a lawsuit Friday asking the state of California to immediately allow her doctor to prescribe life-ending medication without criminal prosecution — so that she can end her life before her terminal lung cancer does.

O’Donnell was diagnosed last summer with stage IV cancer in her lung that spread to her brain. Her chemotherapy treatments have lost their effectiveness, and, if her new treatments fail as well, she’s expected to live until June or July.

“The most likely way that I’m going to die with the lung cancer is that my left lung will fill with fluid, I’ll start drowning in my own fluid,” the 46-year-old single mother says in a YouTube video, recorded on March 4. “I spend an inordinate amount of time being afraid of the pain that I’m going to endure. All of that time that my mind spends thinking about that, I am not living. I don’t want to die [but] I should be able to get a prescription [for aid-in-dying medication], have that peace, and never think about it ‘til the day I’m ready to die.”

Watch O’Donnell’s YouTube video below: 

O'Donnell tells Yahoo Health that she’s most concerned about her 20-year-old daughter. "I don’t want my daughter to either come home and find my dead body or to watch me experience a protracted and painful death,” she says. “I don’t want her to have to live with those awful memories the rest of her life. I need help now because I’m dying quickly and painfully.”

She adds that her daughter has been by her side throughout the process and has seen her suffering. “Over the last 10 months, she has watched me exhaust all my medical options, she has held my head while I’ve been nauseous after chemo, watched me in the hospital several times, and waited while I’ve been in surgery,” she says. “She has learned firsthand how devastating a terminal illness is to a family.”

Christy O’Donnell and her daughter, Bailey. (Photo courtesy of Christy O’Donnell/Compassion & Choices)

O’Donnell is named in the lawsuit along with two other patients with advanced cancer. They are working with Compassion & Choices, a nonprofit that supports right-to-die legislation. Compassion & Choices also worked with Maynard, which inspired O’Donnell to reach out to the organization.

O’Donnell says she’s not seeking money; she simply wants the right to die on her own terms without legal repercussions for her doctor.

Aid in dying is currently illegal in O’Donnell’s home state of California, as well as in most states. As of now, only Oregon, Vermont, and Washington allow doctors to prescribe life-ending medication to terminal patients. (Maynard moved from California to Oregon to take advantage of its Death with Dignity Act.)

Related: Should A 17-Year-Old Be Allowed To Choose Death?

Death-with-dignity legislation has been introduced in 23 states and the District of Columbia since Maynard’s death in November 2014. The New Jersey assembly passed an aid in dying bill 12 days after Maynard’s death, but that bill is still working its way through the state legal system.

Critics of death-with-dignity legislation say they’re concerned that the law will be abused, but data doesn’t support those claims. Oregon released a report of data collected since 1998 (when the Death with Dignity Act took effect), that shows aid in dying is rarely used but provides comfort to terminally ill patients. Last year, for example, 155 Oregon residents had prescriptions written but only 60 percent took the medication.

While death-with-dignity is illegal in most states, public opinion is supportive of the act. According to a Medscape poll conducted last year, 54 percent of U.S. doctors would support a patient’s decision to end his or her life. A 2014 Harris poll found that 74 percent of Americans believe that the terminally ill should have the choice to end their lives, and 69 percent said in a Gallup poll that doctors should be allowed by the law to end the life of a patient who has a disease that cannot be cured “by some painless means” if the patient and his or her family request it.

O’Donnell tells Yahoo Health that she’s now experiencing more pain despite increasing her pain medication. “There are days where I suffer from excruciating headaches that aren’t alleviated by any medication,” she says. “My back hurts all day, every day, making it difficult to sleep, painful to bend over, and very difficult to do my daily life activities,” she says. “Further, the pain prevents me from fully enjoying the time I have left with my daughter.”

She says she hopes her story will impact people, and encourages talking openly about aid in dying. “No person living in California or anywhere should be forced to suffer painfully,” she says.

Friends of O’Donnell have created an online fundraiser to help care for her daughter after she is gone. To date, it has earned nearly $8,000.

Read This Next: One Woman’s Quest to Die With Dignity—and What It Means for Us All