WATCH: Brittany Maynard explains her choice to end her life
TORONTO – A 29-year-old U.S. woman diagnosed with terminal brain cancer plans to end her life on Nov. 1.
Brittany Maynard learned she had cancer in January but it wasn’t until April that doctors diagnosed her with stage four glioblastoma and told her she had about six months to live.
UPDATE: ‘I still have enough joy’: Brittany Maynard posts new video on decision to die
“The thoughts that go through your mind when you find out you have so little time is everything you need to say to everyone you love,” Maynard said in a YouTube video.
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After doctors told the San Francisco newlywed her last few months would be painful and uncomfortable, Maynard and her family moved to Oregon, one of the five states that passed the Death with Dignity Act, according to TheBrittanyFund.org.
There — along with Montana, Vermont, New Mexico and Washington — terminally-ill people can end their lives through self-administered lethal medications that are prescribed by a doctor.
“I can’t tell you the amount of relief it provides me to know that I don’t have to die the way that it’s been described to me that my brain tumour might take me.”
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Maynard plans to die at home just days after her husband’s birthday.
“I will die upstairs in my bedroom that I share with my husband,” she said in the video, “with my mother and my husband by my side and pass peacefully with some music that I like in the background.”
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