The Brittany Maynard Fund | Compassion & Choices

Brittany's Obituary

One Day Your Life Will Flash Before Your Eyes, Make Sure it's Worth Watching

Brittany Lauren Maynard was born in 1984 and forged a brief but solid 29 years of generosity, compassion, education, travel, and humor. She happily met her husband Daniel Diaz in April of 2007 and they married, as best friends, 5 years later in September of 2012.

This past year, on New Year's Day, Brittany was diagnosed with brain cancer. She was given a terminal diagnosis for which there was no cure or life saving measures available. In the face of such terminal illness and pain, Brittany chose to live each day fully, traveled, and kept as physically active and busy as she possibly could.

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."- Theodore Roosevelt. A formula to live by, sick or well.

After being told by one doctor that "she probably didn't even have weeks to be on her feet," she was found climbing 10 mile trails along the ice fields of Alaska with her best friend in the sunshine months later. "Speak your own truth, even when your voice shakes." she would say.

Brittany graduated from UC Berkeley as an undergrad, and received a Masters in Education from UC Irvine. She believed in compassion, equity, and that people would remember most how you made them feel in life. As Faulkner said, "Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If more people all over the world would do this, the world would change."

She was an accomplished and adventuresome traveler who spent many months living solo and teaching in orphanages in Kathmandu, Nepal. That single experience forever changed her life and perspective on childhood, happiness, privilege and outcomes. She fell in love with her time in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Singapore and Thailand. She spent a summer working in Costa Rica, and traveled to Tanzania, and summited Kilimanjaro with a girlfriend a month before her wedding. She took ice climbing courses on Cayambe and Cotopaxi in Ecuador and was an avid scuba diver, who relished her time in the Galapagos, Zanzibar, Caymans and pretty much any island she ever visited.

She loved her two dogs like family, a small Beagle and large Great Dane, and was always the one to take in lost dogs and find them homes. Brittany was a regular volunteer at a local animal rescue organization before her diagnosis.

Brittany chose to make a well thought out and informed choice to Die With Dignity in the face of such a terrible, painful, and incurable illness. She moved to Oregon to pass away in a little yellow house she picked out in the beautiful city of Portland. Oregon is a place that strives to protect patient rights and autonomy; she wished that her home State of California had also been able to provide terminally ill patients with the same choice. Brittany chose to speak out and advocate for this patient right and option, which she felt is an informed choice that should be made available to all terminally ill patients across our great nation. "The freedom is in the choice," she believed. "If the option of DWD is unappealing to anyone for any reason, they can simply choose not to avail themselves of it. Those very real protections are already in place." With great consideration, she gave personal interviews to the UK's Tonight Show prior to Death with Dignity being addressed by their Parliament, as well as participated in an American based campaign for Death With Dignity education and legislation.

She is survived by her faithful, practical, and kind husband Daniel Diaz, her loving self-less mother Deborah Ziegler and honorable step-father Gary Holmes. And by Dan's loving supportive family, parents: Carmen and Barry and brothers: David, Adrian, and Alex. All of whom she adored and loved very deeply. While she had longed for children of her own, she left this world with zero regrets on time spent, places been, or people she loved in her 29 years.

In this final message, she wanted to express a note of deep thanks to all her beautiful, smart, wonderful, supportive friends whom she "sought out like water" during her life and illness for insight, support, and the shared experience of a beautiful life.

"It is people who pause to appreciate life and give thanks who are happiest. If we change our thoughts, we change our world! Love and peace to you all." – Brittany Maynard

Read notes from Brittany and her family here.

About Brittany Maynard

This spring, 29-year-old newlywed Brittany Maynard learned that she had terminal brain cancer. After careful assessment of her prognosis and end-of-life choices, she and her family reluctantly decided to move from their San Francisco Bay Area home to Oregon, one of five states (including Washington, Montana, Vermont and New Mexico) that authorize death with dignity.

Brittany recognizes it is unfair that the vast majority of people cannot access death with dignity because they do not have the resources and time to uproot their family, seek appropriate medical care and establish a support system.

As a result, in the few weeks she has left to live, Brittany wants to advocate for access for death with dignity in California and nationwide in partnership with Compassion & Choices, the nation's leading end-of-life choice advocacy organization.

Brittany Maynard's glioblastoma brain tumor is being treated with several strong prescription drugs designed to reduce swelling of the brain and to try to minimize debilitating seizures. Unfortunately, these drugs come with their own frustrating set of side effects including rapid weight gain and swelling of the face. In spite of some profound shyness regarding her new prescription drug-induced appearance, Brittany agreed to be interviewed on film regarding Death with Dignity because her strong belief in the ethics of this basic healthcare human right.

Brittany's mission is to keep her legacy alive through advocacy work, while bringing the lessons she has learned to her fellow millennials: in our time on earth all that counts are the people you love and the people who love you. Appreciate them. Don't miss a moment.

What is death with dignity?

Death with dignity is an option every person deserves, to reduce suffering at the end of life and die in comfort and control, with dignity. It has been ruled a constitutionally protected right in state and federal courts. Death-with-dignity or aid in dying is a medical practice in which a terminally ill and mentally competent adult requests, and a doctor prescribes, a life-ending medication the person self-administers. Recent national polling puts public support for aid in dying at 70 percent.

For Brittany, it means that when her suffering becomes too great, she can call everyone she loves to her side as she tells them she loves them and they say goodbye. For anyone who takes the prescription, it means falling off to sleep and peacefully passing on.
Oregon's Death With Dignity Act, which Brittany accessed, was the first in the nation. Its 17-year history shows that death-with-dignity laws are safe and work as designed. It has been thoroughly documented by the state health department, investigated by medical researchers and monitored by the news media. None of the concerns raised by opponents about coercion or abuse have ever materialized.
Death-with-dignity laws are voluntary. An eligible person can request the prescription, but no doctor is obligated to provide it. Once a prescription is written, the patient chooses when and whether to fill it – or take it. Most people never take it. Simply having the choice provides people a sense of peace in the face of uncertainty and fear that their suffering might be unbearable. It allows people the freedom to die in control, with dignity.

About Compassion & Choices

As the oldest and largest organization working to improve care and expand choice at the end of life, Compassion & Choices operates many programs and services.

Compassion & Choices advocates for death with dignity laws in states across the country so that every American can have the sense of peace that Brittany sought – without having to entirely uproot their life. The Brittany Maynard Fund, an initiative of Compassion & Choices, will be used to advance such laws.

We use legal strategies, ballot measures and legislative efforts to make death with dignity accessible state-by-state. Currently we are campaigning in five states (California, Colorado, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut) for laws that will make aid in dying an authorized, regulated medical practice. Where it is already authorized (Montana, New Mexico, Vermont, Washington and Oregon) we run ongoing education campaigns for the public and health providers to expand access to aid in dying.

Our End of Life Consultation (EOLC) program provides free, confidential support anywhere in the country with trained experts who help people improve the quality of life they have left, achieve a peaceful death or plan ahead.

Our website is also a hub for resources to help families and individuals make their end of life plans. Compassion & Choices makes these resources available to help people start the conversation and make their wishes known so they can avoid unnecessary suffering in their final days and weeks.

Compassion & Choices is also active in the policy arena, and participates in the federal Campaign to End Unwanted Medical Treatment (End UMT). It is a coalition of organizations committed to helping health care consumers get the best treatment, and the treatment they want – no more and no less.

Show your support for Brittany!

Brittany Maynard's story has captivated the nation and become a social media phenomenon; her video has been seen millions of times around the world. There are now millions more people who know the importance of access to death with dignity.

For her message to have its greatest impact, we need to continue to get the word out, and social sharing is at the heart of this effort.

Join millions of other folks who have shown their support for Brittany by sharing these messages on your social networks.

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http://www.thebrittanyfund.org/