At the height of the 2019 holiday season — on Christmas Eve — I received news no one wants to hear. My oncologist informed me that the lump I had found in my right breast was Stage 3 cancer, which had spread into the surrounding lymph nodes.
Treatment was swift and debilitating, starting with chemotherapy and eventually, in April 2020, a mastectomy. This was followed by 25 rounds of radiation and six months of oral chemo. Adding to the usual challenges like GI distress and fatigue, the first wave of COVID was hitting New York City, which meant I had to navigate these frightening moments alone without my partner.
I fought through and was rewarded with clean scans and mammograms in 2021. I started to rebuild my life, returning to activities I loved like running, biking, and motorcycling. I believed I had left cancer behind.
I was wrong. And now, instead of planning for the rest of my life, I’m thinking of how it will end. After undergoing so much traumatic treatment, I am certain that autonomy at that moment is critical to me. But without action in Albany next year, I can’t have it.
Last December, a PET scan revealed my cancer wasn’t just back but had spread. I underwent major surgery to remove fruit-sized tumors from my abdomen. Not long after, my oncologist delivered what was effectively a life sentence: I had incurable metastatic breast cancer. My treatment became palliative rather than curative. I was told the life expectancy of someone like me is, on average, five to seven years.
I am one year in and counting. The surgeons were able to remove all visible cancer from my body. My current treatment — hormone injections and oral chemotherapy — seems to be working. To date, I have had no additional recurrence.
Yet, every day I hear the ticking of that clock. I don’t fear death. I am, however, terrified of a long and painful dying process and losing my ability to make health care decisions.
Medical aid in dying allows terminally ill adults with six months or less to live to request a prescription from their doctor they can take at a time and place of their choosing to die on their own terms. For close to a decade, advocates have been urging state lawmakers to pass a bill making medical aid in dying legal in New York. Now, I am one of them.
I have seen the kind of death I want. The wife of my partner’s friend was dying from ovarian cancer. As a New Jersey resident, she was able to access medical aid in dying and peacefully passed at home, surrounded by friends and family.
Another of my partner’s friends watched her husband die painfully in Connecticut, where medical aid in dying is not available. Despite good hospice care, he was in great distress with tumors growing through his skin. He was desperate to die, and ultimately stopped eating and drinking. It was torture for him and for his wife, taking much longer than they wished.
The difference between a good death or a bad death shouldn’t depend on where you live.
I want to die in a place I know, with people I know, in surroundings I know, not in a New Jersey hotel room. My partner and I are New Yorkers. My friends, support system and medical care team are here.
I subject myself — and my loved ones — to all the treatments and side effects because the hope of extending my life makes sense for me right now. I have a rich full life — a job I love, a partner I love, a church I love, and a deep community of friends. But I dread giving up autonomy over how I die.
Medical aid in dying isn’t about ending my life prematurely. I’ve spent my career working in social justice trying to change policies to improve the health, dignity and autonomy for people and communities. This, too, is about autonomy.
I’ve lived a full and satisfying life. I hope to be alive for many more years. But when the time comes, I want the option for a peaceful and beautiful death. Everything about cancer treatment is hard; my death shouldn’t have to be.
Enough is enough, Albany. All we’re asking for is the option to make an informed and deeply personal decision. Show me and all New Yorkers some love and let us have the option of a peaceful death on our own terms. Pass the Medical Aid in Dying Act now.
Netherland is a medical sociologist and managing director of research and academic engagement at the Drug Policy Alliance.
from New York Daily News https://ift.tt/DZFw9eS