“I was not relaxed or confident until I had it in my cupboard,” McQ said.Īt the time, he intended to take the drug in late February.
For weeks, the bottle holding the lethal dose sat on a shelf in his kitchen. In late December, a friend picked up a prescription for 100 tablets of the powerful sedative secobarbital. And I would rather have it not be a surprise.” The choice, he said, became not death over a healthy life, but a “certain outcome” now over a prolonged, painful - and “unknowable” - end. Last November, doctors told McQ he had six months or less to live. But McQ’s legs shook involuntarily beneath his dark jeans and his voice was hoarse with pain during a three-hour effort to tell his story. Thin and wan, with silver hair and piercing blue eyes, McQ still could have passed for the photographer’s model he once was. Detractors - including religious groups, disability rights advocates and some doctors - argue that such laws could put pressure on vulnerable people and that proper palliative care can ease end-of-life suffering. Supporters say the practice gives patients control over their own fate in the face of a terminal illness. Even as similar statutes have expanded to more venues - including, this year, Hawaii - it has remained controversial.Ĭalifornia’s End of Life Option Act, which took effect in 2016, was suspended for three weeks this spring after a court challenge, leaving hundreds of dying patients briefly in limbo. More than 3,000 people in the US have chosen such deaths since Oregon’s law was enacted in 1997, according to state reports. “How does anyone get their head around dying?” he said, sitting in a wheelchair in his Seattle apartment in late January. He said he hoped to shed light on an often secretive and misunderstood practice. The practice, approved in seven states and the District of Columbia, allows people with a projected six months or less to live to obtain lethal drugs to end their lives.Īlthough the option was legal, actually carrying it out was difficult for McQ, who agreed to discuss his deliberations with Kaiser Health News. Last fall, McQ decided to use Washington state’s 2009 Death With Dignity law to end his suffering.
“It’s like waking up every morning in quicksand,” McQ said. Then the disease threatened to shut down his ability to swallow and breathe. The 50-year-old Seattle man - a former world traveler, triathlete and cyclist - learned he had leukemia five years ago, followed by an even grimmer diagnosis in 2016: a rare form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.Īn interior and urban designer who legally changed his given name, McQ had been in pain and physical decline for years. In the end, it wasn’t easy for Aaron McQ to decide when to die.
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