California Single Mom Fights for Right to Die

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/california-single-mom-fights-die/story?id=31154132

Christy O’Donnell doesn’t want to die, but she doesn’t want to spend the rest of her good days fearing the painful death that awaits her as she struggles with terminal cancer, she said.

“The most likely way that I’m going to die with the lung cancer is that my left lung will fill with fluid, I’ll start drowning in my own fluid,” she says in a YouTube video posted this week by Compassion and Choices, the nonprofit aid-in-dying group that Brittany Maynard worked with before ending her life last fall. “If I get to a hospital, they’ll very painfully put a tube in. They’ll drain the fluid from my lung, only to patch me up, send me home and wait until the next time my lung fills up with fluid. And they’ll continue to repeat that process and drowning painfully until I die.” …

O’Donnell was diagnosed with adenocarcinoma, a lung cancer she explains is common among non-smokers. She said she’s a vegetarian, that she’s always exercised and that she’s never smoked. According to the lawsuit, she has been given six months to live. The cancer has spread to her brain, liver, rib and spine, and she is morphine intolerant, so it’s hard to manage her pain.

The former Los Angeles Police Department detective and practicing lawyer has said that she’s lived “10 people’s lives” in the last 46 years, and she’s not afraid to die…