A Valencia woman diagnosed with terminal cancer is fighting to decide how to end her life, and is now a plaintiff in a new lawsuit, asking that she and patients like her be allowed to end their lives with the help of a willing doctor and not face prosecution.
Currently, medically assisted death is against state law in California, but Christy O'Donnell is a 46-year-old single mother with terminal cancer who says it comes down to choice.
She wants to choose how she should die and believes that she can and should be able to do so in her home.
"I'm faced with the reality that because it's not lawful here in California that my daughter is either going to come home and find my body — and no child should have to deal with that — or she is going to have watch me suffer," O'Donnell says.
It's a thought that consumes her, much like the terminal cancer that has spread from her lungs to her brain, ribs, and spine.
"I have exhausted all of my medical efforts," she says.
As a plaintiff in a new lawsuit, the former civil rights attorney and former LAPD sergeant says the state law making it a felony to assist or encourage a person to take his or her life is against her constitutional rights.
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"When it's already lawful for me to have a choice to deny hydration and nutrition in California, it should likewise be lawful for me to decide when is the right time when I can no longer endure the pain," she says.
The nonprofit organization Compassion & Choices is part of the suit — the same group that helped spread right-to-die advocate Brittany Maynard's message.
Twenty-nine-year-old Maynard moved to Oregon last year — one of four states according to the suit that accept medically assisted death — after deciding she wanted to end her life when the time was right for her after being diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.
Maynard ended her life in November.
But moving is not an option for O’Donnell and her daughter, Bailey.
"I'm not going to make her start again and the bottom line is I shouldn't have to," O’Donnell says.
She has hope for passage of a bill in the state Senate that would allow a terminally ill patient to request a prescription for aid-in-dying medication.
That bill is currently in the California Senate Appropriations Committee. If it comes out, the Senate would vote on the bill by June 5.
The assembly then has until September, time O’Donnell isn’t sure she has.
Her goal to make it to her daughter’s 21st birthday next month.
"In my last breath with her holding my hand, I want to know that (my daughter) is going to walk out of that room and have her whole family there. That's what I want."
