After being diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor, Brittany Maynard will die on Nov. 1. She can can be sure of the date because she is choosing it.
"There is not a cell in my body that is suicidal or that wants to die,"
she told People in an exclusive interview. "I want to live. I wish there was a cure for my disease but there's not."
At age 29, Maynard had been married for a year and was trying for a family with her husband, she told People. But a brain tumor changed everything.
Her prognosis was and is not good. She would need surgery and full-brain radiation, which she says would have singed off her hair and left first-degree burns on her scalp.
"My quality of life, as I knew it, would be gone,"
Maynard wrote in a column for CNN. "Because the rest of my body is young and healthy, I am likely to physically hang on for a long time even though cancer is eating my mind. I probably would have suffered in hospice care for weeks or even months. And my family would have had to watch that."
So Maynard began to research death with dignity and ultimately decided to uproot from California and move to Oregon, where assisted suicide is authorized.
"I've had the medication for weeks. I am not suicidal," she wrote. "If I were, I would have consumed that medication long ago. I do not want to die. But I am dying. And I want to die on my own terms."
Maynard is now advocating for a law that would allow assisted death, partnering with end-of-life advocacy group Compassion & Choices. Currently only four other states besides Oregon have right-to-die legislation: Washington, Montana, Vermont, and New Mexico.
She's also spending her last weeks with her husband and family as her pain gets worse.
"I hope for the sake of my fellow American citizens that I'll never meet that this option is available to you," she wrote for CNN. "If you ever find yourself walking a mile in my shoes, I hope that you would at least be given the same choice and that no one tries to take it from you."