Close to Home: Seeking the alternatives we wish we had

“Never say never” is one of my favorite expressions. I never thought I’d be in almost total agreement with George Will, ever, yet it happened with his Aug. 30 column affirming the right to physician-assisted dying. And I hope, once it becomes the law, most families will never be faced with the need to choose that right.

My teenage son and I recently attended a press conference at the state Capitol. We went to support AB X2-15, the newest death-with-dignity bill, which was introduced into the special session of the Assembly. A dozen speakers addressed the urgent need for the prompt passage of this bill, which could still become law this year. The speakers described feeling helpless as friends and loved ones experienced unnecessarily long, excruciatingly painful deaths. All spoke eloquently, sometimes through tears, speaking from the heart.

Brittany Maynard’s family retold of uprooting their lives and moving to Oregon to allow her to die on her own terms. The well-known activist Dolores Huerta spoke of her Catholicism and of her mother’s long ago cancer death, which motivates her to campaign in support of aid in dying, something she sees as a fundamental human right. A minister described how he counsels dying people, stressing that his God is one of love and compassion who doesn’t require hopeless suffering, and he recognized that separation of church and state protects both institutions.

When the news conference ended, we mingled in the corridor. My son and I thanked the elected officials for their persistent efforts and urged them to keep pushing for the bill’s passage. We explained we were there because my husband/his father had valiantly battled cancer for more than two decades. Once the cancer gained the upper hand, spreading throughout his bones and various organs, he was left in excruciating, uncontrollable pain and suffering. Despite excellent palliative care, the pain and nausea simply could not be controlled. His battle switched to wanting to die as peacefully and quickly as possible. Unfortunately, within the current constraints of the law, there was little the hospice team could do to help.

We told how for the last two weeks of 2014, while most homes were filled with joy around the holidays, ours focused on this wonderful man’s 24/7 drug-numbed struggle, punctuated by moments of terror and clarity. He would wake up asking why he was still here. We had no good answer.

Legally, we were helpless to do more, as he lay stuck in an agonizing limbo, lungs breathing, heart beating, as the ever-increasing doses of narcotics took his balance and his power of lucid thought but not his pain. He intentionally refused food and drink to hasten his own death, to encourage the cancer to finally win.

He would have agreed with Jennifer Glass who said to her state legislators, “I’m doing everything I can to extend my life. No one should have the right to prolong my death.”

He would have appreciated Will’s succinct response to the slippery slope arguments:

“Life, however, is inevitably lived on multiple slippery slopes: Taxation could become confiscation, police could become instruments of oppression, public education could become indoctrination, etc. Everywhere and always, civilization depends on the drawing of intelligent distinctions.”

Every family is one bad death away from understanding their desperate need for aid in dying. Our family already experienced that bad death. That experience compels us to support the End of Life Option Act so that others might avoid what we could not. Others may never choose that option, but until they need it, they may never know.

Jeanette Lebell, a resident of Sebastopol, is an attorney and social activist. She is currently working as a medical assistant.