(Newswire.net — October 7, 2014) — Brittany was given six months to live, but she intends to end her own life the way she wants and she wants to make it clear it is NOT suicide.
“I want to live… I wish there was a cure for my disease but there’s not. There is not a cell in my body that is suicidal or that wants to die,” she tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview.
“My glioblastoma is going to kill me, and that’s out of my control,” she says, but what is under Brittany’s control is choosing a way to go and “being able to choose to go with dignity is less terrifying,” she said.
Brittany will launch an online video campaign with the nonprofit end-of-life choice advocacy organization Compassion & Choices,to fight for expanding death-with-dignity laws nationwide.
In mid-October, she will videotape her testimony as well as her mothers, Debbie Ziegler, and husbands, Dan Diaz, 42.
The 6 minutes video will be played for California lawmakers and voters at the appropriate time
Her entire family moved with her to Portland earlier this year so she could have access to Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act, which has been in place since late 1997.
DWDA records show that 1,173 people have had prescriptions written under the act, and 752 have used them to die.
Four other states – Washington, Montana, Vermont and New Mexico – have authorized euthanasia as aid to die.
“Right now it’s a choice that’s only available to some Americans, which is really unethical,” Brittany says. The amount of sacrifice and change my family had to go through in order to get me to legal access to death with dignity – changing our residency, establishing a team of doctors, having a place to live – was profound,” she says.
“I believe this choice is ethical, and what makes it ethical is it is a choice,” she says.
The date she picked was carefully chosen. “I really wanted to celebrate my husband’s birthday, which is October 30,” she says. “I’m getting sicker, dealing with more pain and seizures and difficulties so I just selected it.” Maynard says her exhaustion has “increased a lot” recently.
Maynard will end her life on Nov. 1
DWDA records shows that the three most frequently mentioned end-of-life concerns were:
– Loss of autonomy (93.0%),
– Decreasing ability to participate in activities that made life enjoyable (88.7%),
– Loss of dignity (73.2%).