Maggie Lake spent January 15 autographing copies of her artwork, signing over her car registration and talking quietly with family.
“Then at some point she just said, ‘It’s time,'” according to her oldest sister, Katy Lesser of Underhill.
After nine years of battling cancer — including two stem-cell transplants, chemotherapy and radiation — Lake had come to the end of her fight.
Lying in bed at her Putney home as day turned to evening, the 60-year-old took the lethal dose of drugs she’d been prescribed weeks earlier. She urged her family to coach her through it as she swallowed the combination of pills and liquids.
“We sat with her. We talked to her. We talked to each other. We reminisced. We laughed. We cried,” Lesser said.
Within 10 minutes, Lake slipped into a coma. She lay quietly for eight hours before dying in the early morning of January 16.
“It was very, very peaceful,” Lesser said. “It was pretty awesome.”
Lake lived an amazing life, her sister recalled.
“She was really good at a lot of things,” Lesser said. “She had two kids she adored, she was a gifted artist, a family nurse practitioner who treated hundreds of patients, a gardener, a cook and baker who grew all her own food. She kept bees, she raised meat and vegetables.”
Just days before Lake died, her latest art exhibit opened in downtown Brattleboro.
Those are the things Lesser wants her sister to be remembered for.
But Lake also had a remarkable death.
She is believed to be the third terminally ill Vermonter to end her life with a lethal prescription since the state legalized the option in 2013, according to Compassion & Choices state director Linda Waite-Simpson, whose organization advocated for the law, helps families navigate it and has tracked its use. Lake’s family is the first in Vermont to step forward to share its story.
Multiple Opinions
Twenty years ago, the people of Oregon voted for its seminal Death with Dignity Act. In the decades since, only Washington and Vermont have followed its lead — and only Vermont has done so legislatively. Courts in Montana and New Mexico have also protected the practice.
But the debate over Vermont’s law is far from over. Advocates plan to seek changes this legislative session to ensure that state regulations surrounding its use remain in effect. They believe the measures guard against abuse, evidence of which would likely lead to the law’s undoing. Some of the regulations, including a mandatory waiting period and second opinion, are due to expire in July because of a last-minute compromise struck to pass the bill two years ago.
“It’s working exactly as we intended,” said Sen. Claire Ayer (D-Addison), a leading advocate. “We have a responsibility to make sure it’s under circumstances that give us some safeguards.”
Opponents, meanwhile, hope to repeal the Patient Choice and Control at End of Life Act, which was approved by a narrow margin in 2013.
“We never should have passed it,” said Sen. Peg Flory (R-Rutland). “I think it sends a horrible, horrible message to kids and the disability groups.”
Many local medical professionals remain deeply uncomfortable with the idea of hastening death when their mission is to keep people alive. But since the Vermont law took effect May 20, 2013, doctors have prescribed lethal doses to five people, according to Vermont Department of Health spokesman Robert Stirewalt. Two of them didn’t end up using the drugs, according to Waite-Simpson, a former state representative from Essex.
Doctors are required to inform the state each time they write such a prescription, affirming that they followed certain criteria, but the law does not require them to report whether a patient uses the drugs.
Waite-Simpson’s group has collected that information from friends and family members of those who have sought to hasten their deaths, and from caregivers who have sought the organization’s advice.
Jason Saltman, a 47-year-old Middlebury man with stomach cancer, was the first Vermonter to obtain a lethal prescription in November 2013. He died hours before he planned to pick up the drugs, according to his sister, Laura Saltman.
Waite-Simpson said others were unwilling to speak publicly.
Dying the Way She Lived
Lake was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s mantle cell lymphoma in 2006. She enjoyed relatively good health for six of the next nine years, according to her sister. In the course of her treatment, she endured stem-cell transplants, radiation and numerous hospital visits.
Before she knew that a second transplant was possible, Lake started looking into obtaining a lethal prescription. That was before Vermont’s law passed, her sister said. “No one wanted to help her, because it was illegal,” Lesser said.
When the second transplant became a reality, about a year and a half ago, she turned her focus to getting better, her sister said. It worked — for a time.
“She seemed to be getting better for a while, and then she wasn’t getting better,” Lesser said.
Lake’s health then quickly deteriorated.
“She started to see her whole selfhood disintegrate,” Lesser said. “She was in pain all the time. She was having trouble breathing because the cancer spread to her lungs.”
That’s when Lake began thinking about the new legal option available to her. She talked about it freely with family, her sister said, but the conversations and the decision were difficult. They all would have preferred for her to get better and live, Lesser said, but they were all on board with her decision.
“For a long time she really felt there was always hope. Then she really felt like there was no hope,” Lesser said. “In the end she wanted to die the way she lived: with those she loved, in her home, her wits about her, and with purpose and determination. And that is what she made happen.”
Lake was the third of four girls in the family, six years younger than Lesser. “Maggie was a diminutive little girl, but she was a powerhouse,” Lesser said. “She was one of the most alive people I’ve ever met.”
Lesser said she appreciates that her sister took charge of her death, just as she took charge of her life. Without the law, the end might have looked different.
“She probably would’ve toughed it out and died a miserable, painful death that would have not included any of us because she would have just been out of her mind with pain, drugs, drowning in her own lungs,” Lesser said. “We all have that memory of her going out the way she lived.”
How the Law Works
The process of obtaining a life-ending prescription is detailed, which advocates of the law intended as a way of allaying fears that it could be abused.
In Lake’s case, that process took time. According to her sister, she spent more than a month trying to find a doctor willing to write her a prescription.
Lesser said her sister’s experience led her to believe the requirements are appropriate. “The longer she went through that process, the more doctors, the more meetings — she became more rooted in knowing she might want to do this,” Lesser said.
Vermont’s law requires a patient to:
Be a Vermont resident.
Have a terminal diagnosis with less than six months to live, corroborated by a second opinion.
Have the capacity to make a voluntary decision.
Make two oral requests for the prescription 15 or more days apart.
Make one written request for the prescription with two witnesses who affirm that the request is voluntary.
Waite-Simpson said that from what she knows, all three patients who have used the law to end their lives had different doctors.
Lesser declined to identify her sister’s. Waite-Simpson also declined to name those whom she knows have written prescriptions. She doesn’t want to send a message that only certain go-to doctors in Vermont will do it.
Waite-Simpson said physicians who’ve contacted her for advice have described a variety of experiences. One found his patient lacked the mental competence to make the decision, she said, and turned the patient down.
Some Vermont hospitals and other health care facilities have opted for exemptions that prevent patients from using the law within their facilities.
But supporters of the law say it is working. They never expected large numbers of people to exercise the right it gives them, and say they knew that some might seek prescriptions they would never use.
“I’ve received countless messages from all over the state from people grateful they have the choice,” said Dick Walters of Shelburne, president of Patient Choices Vermont, who has spent more than a decade advocating for the law.
Diagnosed with lung cancer in April, Walters now finds the law personally reassuring. “There’s tremendous peace of mind knowing that you’re in control,” he said.
Oregon Trail
The number of patients ending their lives has gradually risen in Oregon, where the practice has been legal since 1998. In 2013, 122 Oregon residents received a prescription and 71 used it, according to the Oregon Public Health Division. The Beaver State’s population is more than six times Vermont’s.
The Oregon law also requires much more detailed reporting of information on each patient. Records indicate that, in 2013, the median amount of time between ingestion and death was 15 minutes, with a range from five minutes to 5.6 hours. Since 1998, the longest time span reported between ingestion and death in Oregon was 104 hours.
No states have adopted similar laws since Vermont’s passed in 2013, though some are considering it. One such bill was introduced last week in California.
Meanwhile, those who opposed passage of Vermont’s law aren’t giving up.
“It’s a formula for abuse,” said Lynne Cleveland Vitzthum, who represents the Vermont Center for Independent Living, an advocacy group for those with disabilities. “We will push for repeal.”
Vitzthum, whose adult son has cerebral palsy and autism, said the law adds to existing pressures that those with disabilities endure over the value of their lives in the face of expensive health care needs. When her son was 8 and had pneumonia, she said, his doctor suggested she could consider letting him die.
“This helps a society that might not value us say, ‘Here’s a solution.’ Our needs are expensive. Our care is expensive,” Vitzthum said. “For some populations, it’s not very difficult to socially engineer the will to die, where it looks like they’re making the choice.”
Vitzthum also argued that the law itself has numerous flaws, many of which came as a result of last-minute changes during the legislative process. Many of the regulations and reporting requirements, modeled on Oregon’s law, were stripped away to win the votes of two senators, Peter Galbraith, a Windham Democrat, and Bob Hartwell, a Bennington Democrat. They insisted the few remaining regulations should sunset in 2016 because they were against any government involvement in the process.
Galbraith and Hartwell both retired from the legislature last year.
Ayer said she hopes to keep this year’s vote focused solely on whether to reinstate the regulations, such as the waiting period and requirement for multiple requests, rather than revisiting the merits of the law itself.
Vitzthum argues that its regulations are too vague, including the definition of a Vermont resident, which is left up to a doctor. She also notes that while the law requires a patient to be capable of voluntarily requesting a prescription, there is no guarantee of a patient’s ability to make decisions when it comes time to take the medicine.
Other groups plan to join Vitzthum in seeking repeal of the law, including the Vermont Alliance for Ethical Healthcare and the Vermont Right to Life Committee.
Ayer said she does not believe the law will be repealed.
“They don’t have the votes,” she said. “And the governor would veto it.”
‘Today’s the Day’
Lake got her lethal prescription filled weeks before taking it, according to her sister. She was waiting until just the right time, without knowing for sure whether it would arrive, depending on what direction her health took.
“The day she died, she said, ‘Yesterday was too soon. Tomorrow’s too late. Today’s the day,'” Lesser said.
Her two adult children, partner and three sisters were by her bedside as Lake took the drugs and went into a coma. Lesser said they started to worry as the hours passed. “We started thinking, ‘My God, is the dose right?'” Lesser said.
In the end, her sister died peacefully. A celebration of her life is planned for June in an orchard in Putney.
“I can assure you there will be a thousand people,” Lesser said.
Just before her death, Lake rallied to finish work for her last art show and traveled to Brattleboro, with the help of a wheelchair, to see the exhibit, of botanical prints, just before it opened at Mitchell Giddings Fine Arts.
On the gallery’s website, Lake wrote about seeing the withering flora in late fall on one of her last hikes through the woods.
“What a metaphor for life, for my life, as I struggle with terminal cancer, birth, death and rebirth,” she wrote.
Her show, called “Gone to Seed,” runs through March 1.
Last Rights: A Putney Woman Becomes the Third Vermonter to End Her Life Using New Law
The original print version of this article was headlined “Last Rights: A Putney Woman Becomes the Third Vermonter to End Her Life Using New Law”
This article appears in Jan 28 – Feb 3, 2015.
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Superb writing about a superb person.
This is a well written article. Kudos to Terri Hallenbeck, and condolences to Maggie Lake’s family and loved ones. One thing we need to remember in the volatile debate over Act 39 is that , contrary to the spin made by people like Linda Waite-Simpson of Compassion Choices (formerly “The Hemlock Society”), not everyone presented with this option will choose it voluntarily, and we must be conscious of the very real vulnerability of those people –the poor, the aged, the severely disabled, just to name a few –and the need to protect them from coercion and abuse. Dying is not an either-or proposition (“either I hasten my death, or I die in pain”). There is the potential for excellent palliative care for anyone with a terminal diagnosis, and improving access to such care should be the primary focus of our legislature, not providing means to an alternate death at one’s own hand . The reality is that a “dignified death”, and one without severe pain, is attainable without recourse to a hastened, artificial end. The potential for harm to the vulnerable inherent in Act 39 far outweighs any arguable “good” it can possibly do.
Of the 71 reports of assisted suicide in Oregon in 2013, information on complications or the length of time between ingestion of the lethal drug and death was reported for only 11 people. Information on the other 60 cases is, according to the Oregon Public Health Division, “not known.” While Oregon has “data” on assisted suicide, it is incomplete and insufficient to provide a true picture of how assisted suicide really happens. Also, while it is technically accurate to say that the longest reported time between ingestion of the lethal drug and death is 104 hours, this ignores the fact that some who take the supposedly lethal drug do not die from it. Data from the Netherlands shows that 18-25% of Dutch people who take the same dose of the same drug as is used in Oregon do not die.
How do we keep euthanasia cuddly enough for the readers of Seven Days? Hum Kumbaya while the next individual dies from an alleged overdose? What if things don’t go smoothly with the next poor soul? What if the individual lives in spite of everything and cannot self administer another dose? Will the doctor, family member or someone else take it upon themself to end the life of the patient, violating the law? If so, who would know? What if the patient survives and faces severe physical problems from complications of the medication? Will the patient sue the doctor, pharmacist, or others involved? I know I would. Any clear thinking individual must question why the people who drafted and passed this daffy law without any thought of the consequences are so smitten with glorifying and accelerating death. It has been said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. It appears that many so-called Vermonters fall into that category. They have learned absolutely nothing from the past. Countries that have embraced euthanasia in any form have always expanded the killing not only to include people who desire to die from a terminal illness, but also to those who want to die for frivolous reasons such as such as being unhappy with their life or situation. The reality is that euthanasia is always expanded to be more inclusive, not less. What begins as feigned compassion ends up as full blown genocide. To quote Hitler’s Euthanasia Decree of 1939: “the authority of certain physicians to be designated by name in such manner that persons who, according to human judgment, are incurable can, upon a most careful diagnosis of their condition of sickness, be accorded a mercy death.”. Ask any Jew how that turned out. Sieg Heil.
Thanks to Terri Hallenbeck for lifting the veil over Act 39’s implementation. It is good to be reminded that the law requires doctors to report only the writing of a prescription, not what happens afterwards. We know what happened to only two prescriptions. We cannot verify Linda Waite-Simpson’s claim that there have been two other assisted suicides in Vermont. We cannot know whether there were complications, abuse, or errors. We cannot know if there are unused drugs sitting in somebody’s house waiting to be stolen or taken by a child.
While I sympathize with Lake’s family members and understand their need to find a kernel of good in her death, I find her sister’s description of her suicide as “pretty awesome” disturbing. Suicide is a public health problem. Suicide contagion is a phenomenon so well known that the World Health Organization has issued guidelines warning against the glorification or romanticizing of suicide and urging reporters to include contact information for suicide prevention agencies in articles about it. I wish Hallenbeck had eschewed calling Lake’s death “remarkable”. The fact is that there are too many suicide deaths. Suicide is not remarkable, and Lake’s publicized one will almost certainly contribute to making suicide more ordinary than it already is. In Oregon, non-assisted suicides began to increase three years after legalization of assisted suicide and have continued to rise at a rate consistent with contagion. I fear for readers of this article, some of whom will have depression or another disability, some of whom will be dealing with terminal diagnoses. Some will see suicide, assisted or not, as the solution to their problems. Some, less privileged than Lake, will see it as the only solution. Those people’s suicides will, in the words of Lynn Vitzthum, have been “socially engineered”, not freely chosen.
This piece tells of a woman who had every resource in her life — she was well-traveled, well-educated, had good health care, close family and friends. We will likely never hear the story of the person with no resources and no close family as well as no access to good health care … who felt pressured by circumstances to decide to end their own life …. or worse …. pressured by an impatient, tired family member to die and get out of the way ….. This is scary business with a serious lack of safeguards.
What a great story about a wonderful women, we should all live in a state that allows this
I just hope this law is still in place if I ever need it.
Just because you *fear* something, doesn’t make it real! The “potential for harm” is imaginary. The data in Oregon shows virtually no change in the number of people using this law over the past 15 years. The numbers are so small they don’t amount to a half of one percent of the number who die each year from all causes. There’s no tsunami of pressure on disabled people (who are *not* terminal and *cannot* request a prescription in any case!), no flood of “death tourists” flocking to Oregon to use the law to make way for greedy relatives, and no abuses.
And please don’t call this suicide! Suicide happens when an otherwise healthy person with plenty of future decides, rightly or wrongly, that they no longer want to live the life they are living. Assisted dying happens when a person IS GOING TO DIE VERY SOON NO MATTER WHAT IS DONE, and they decide that they would rather trade their few remaining days or weeks for the chance to die while they can still smile at their loved ones and say goodbye, to meet that end consciously, rather than drugged and incontinent and oblivious. It is not a “mental health problem.” It brings peace and comfort, and greatly improves the personal and emotional outlook of all concerned.
And speaking of concern–If your concern is really for the few who have used this law, then read their stories with an open mind. Do you think you can better judge their experience than *those concerned*, their own families and the doctors who treat them? The people who choose this option are mature adults who value control in a situation where they have had little control over what happened to them up to now. Who are you to say they shouldn’t have that opportunity?
If you don’t like the law, don’t use it. But attempts to repeal it amount to forcing one person’s personal, private beliefs on others, who are under no obligation to share those views. This law protects the personal rights of each individual to make their own choices about their own lives. Isn’t that what America is all about?
Wow! Apparently anyone in Vermont who opposes euthanasia is not well liked on this website. If one does not paint a flowery message embracing suicide, then they are not part of the liberal socialist crowd who has moved in and taken over the state. Why the hostility to life? I’ve lived here in Vermont the entire 67 years of my life. In the last half century I’ve witnessed firsthand the socialist-democrat agenda taking over the state and taking us down the road to servitude and self-destruction. While I have compassion for anyone suffering from a terminal illness like Ms Lake, my empathy stops when individuals use the situation to sell death to other unfortunate humans. Involving the medical profession and pharmacists in this lunacy is more than just a little psychotic. Not many years ago, our illustrious attorney general allowed a doctor to go free without charge after deliberately euthanizing his patient with Norcuron, a drug never used in end-of-life care. I believe he should have been charged with premeditated murder: Everyone knows this was a “trial balloon” to gauge public reaction to the killing. But the attorney general and his political party is in charge and favors euthanasia (as well as abortion) so we all knew the direction they would take, in spite of any objection from their constituents. Now we have “euthanasia lite” and full-blown euthanasia has its ugly foot in the door. Just when that monster will rear its ugly head is anyone’s guess, but nothing the looney socialist-democrats do surprises me any more. As people have observed about Obamacare supporters and their death panels: Don’t get sick… You won’t to regret it.
There is a belief that the end of life needs to by mysterious and an act of fate, rather than a carefully thought out process. Some would prefer that individuals linger in pain, because their “time has not come”, according to some deity or other similar superstition. How arrogant to claim that we know what lies within the heart, mind and decisions anyone else makes regarding their quality, future and end of their life. Most of those who oppose this law are also among those who clamor for less government, particularly when it is convenient to them. Well, it would be good if they extended that to the lives of others and allowed them the respect and autonomy to choose their own path toward an inevitable end of life.
Have any of you naysayers actually WATCHED someone be forced to live to the (very) bitter end?? I have. I watched my brother-in-law lose all dignity, becoming more and more fragile, his quality of life leaving him daily. I watched him struggle for breath. I watched him go through many “treatments (which were only prolonging his suffering, not saving his life).” In the end what killed him was a blood infection, brought on by the weekly chest tubes he had put in him to drain the fluid from his lungs. In the end, he lay in a coma, crying tears of blood, unable to communicate….while his loved ones stood around him, crying and touching his ice-cold body, desperately telling him how much they loved him, hoping against hope he could hear them. What I wouldn’t have given to sit around and share memories with him, while he ended his life on HIS terms, not a doctor’s!!!! We can be compassionate and caring enough to put our animals to sleep, to end their suffering, but not let our loved ones make the same decision for themselves?? Death can be very ugly. Painful. Excruciating. My husband and I both looked at each other after Jim died and said “Don’t you DARE ever let me die like that!!” It was horrible. For a long time after, when I thought of Jim that’s all I could see. I would much rather have memories of him dying peaceful and happy.
God bless her for her bravery.
The number of assisted suicide deaths in Oregon has risen by over 500%, from 16 in the first year to 85 in 2012. C&C’s Barbara Coombs Lee has already supported the extension of the “right to die” to people with dementia. Expansion is happening slowly, but inexorably.
The suicide rate in Oregon is soaring at a rate consistent with suicide contagion.
Thanks for this piece about a wonderful person and the decision that she made, and was able to make, about the end of her life.
Its unclear why we need laws to regulate ourselves. Whether it be this case of abortion or whatever else that comes our way. Healthcare is personal decision. There are too many folks that feel they need a say. What is their motive.
Maggie made the most difficult decision a person can make, a decision she wanted to make given her struggles. It made sense to her and to the everyone that was involved in this tragedy.
Anyone who opposes this law has no idea what it means to have a terminal illness. It’s one thing to believe you’re going to die one day. It’s quite another to know you’re going to die a miserable death soon. Most people I have met deny death, one of the most basic facts of life! I think it was Plato who said that much of life is a preparation for dying. Death with dignity is not suicide. It’s a rational choice to a rational natural process . . . dying.
In la-la land, suicide is not suicide unless you say it is. However, in the real world and the Merriam-Webster dictionary, suicide is defined as… “the act of killing yourself because you do not want to continue living”, OR “… performing a deliberate act resulting in the voluntary death of the person who does it”. I remember attending a right to die lecture in St. Albans several years ago. The pro-death speaker from Oregon indicated that after the individual died from the “lethal” overdose, the cause of death placed on the death certificate was whatever medical condition the individual was suffering from prior to killing him or herself. This in itself is plainly a lie, as I clearly pointed out to the speaker who was obviously in denial. Unless we are living in George Orwell’s society of 1984, any attempt to redefine suicide in order to suit one’s ideological agenda is hypocritical and very dangerous. So-called “death with dignity” IS suicide. Any individual’s death certificate who chooses it should state just that… death by suicide. It IS what it IS. Too often politically correct ideologues try to redefine the truth to further their agenda or get the public to swallow it. If an individual chooses to take his/her own life, then he/she should have the courage and honesty to insist the real cause of death be placed on their death certificate. Moreover. deliberately involving the medical profession and pharmacists is totally unnecessary in today’s drug-infested culture. To say doctors and pharmacists must be involved is sucking these people into one’s desperate situation unnecessarily. Doctors and pharmacists are charged with saving lives, not taking lives. Let’s not erode the sacred trust the public places in these professionals.
Some questions and thoughts that I would like to present…..Why would anyone want another to suffer and to prolong a painful death when he/she is terminal and the law gives him/her an option to die while still aware of surroundings and loved ones? Why does the choice to apply the law to choose to die with assistance
when death is imminent have any real application to someone who is disabled? There is a clear difference between being terminally ill and being disabled. And, perhaps obviously, why is it any one else’s business or concern what another chooses to do in the face of death when the one facing imminent death is competent to make a decision and has a legal means of doing so on his/her own terms (in accordance with what the dying individual believes about death, dying, God, afterlife, ethics and related beliefs and preferences). How free are we????? J. D.
Dear Katy,
I am very sorry for you and your surviving sisters that you no longer have the company of your sister Maggie. And I am deeply impressed that she had this choice to make and that she died surrounded by the loving presence of those she loves. Blessings to you all.
Maggie Lake will be remembered by so many of us in Westminster, Putney and beyond. A truly special woman.
Playing God … and being mortal. Thank you very much Seven Days for your article.
I hope that anyone who hasn’t yet read Dr. Atul Gawande’s caring and carefully researched BEING MORTAL, will! His main point is that much needs to be done to improve care -especially for the growing number of elderly; that improving quality of LIFE needs to be the top priority. He also says (p 245) that given the opportunity to vote for physician assisted death in MA he will. That people have good reasons at times to choose to live fully and die sooner rather than die under medical siege.
I can’t help but wonder- WHY is preventing natural death by using modern machines and drugs not considered PLAYING GOD just as much as helping a very sick person die?
Thanks for a wonderful, thought provoking article. Having witnessed a loved one suffer, I fully support an individual choosing to leave this world with dignity and in peace. Being human, we all hope for a quick and tranquil ending, with our loved ones surrounding us, when the time comes. Who are we to say that someone needs to endure a long painful death, with no hope in sight of ever getting better, just because? I think Vermont has done a great job in establishing many “safeguards” for it is not an easy decision and is not for everyone, but that should be an individual choice. I can’t fully understand Ms. Vitzthum’s confusion and that of her colleagues, AND unrealistic fears that this right to die would become a horrible epidemic, with elders and disabled being thoughtlessly killed left and right….Rest in peace, Ms. Lake and thank you to her family for their infinite support in helping her to move gracefully to her next journey.
Please do not confuse depression and suicide with ending a terminally ill life!
This woman and her family did a very brave thing putting this article out here.
There is nothing noble or romantic letting a person die naturally from cancer. It is a cruel and heartless disease that no one should ever have to suffer.
That said, helping some one die a peaceful and dignified death is perhaps one of the most moving moments in life second only to bringing a child into the world. It is a gift to be able to help some one you love pass with out fear and pain. My heart, love and respect go out to them.
Our dear friend Annette Vachon was I believe the first person in VT to use death with dignity this past October. I am overwhelmingly thankful for her ability to do so. Her decision may be one of the bravest things I’ve witnessed. The process has a lot of hoops and a lot of red tape. Missing from the requirements above is merely finding a pharmacist who would fill the prescription. That in and of itself was a challenge. Good luck finding a CVS or Rite Aid that will. Hospice too was at odds with how to handle a right to die candidate. It was my hope that Anette’s death would help the next person through the process and maybe ease the taboos around the idea. I’m happy to see finally some dialogue on the issue. Thanks for the article.
It will work better when there are doctors in every area of Vermont willing to be a part of this Death with Dignity as well as pharmacies that are willing to fill the prescriptions written. I guess it will just take time.
Having lost my mother in a situation with many parallels, I wholly endorse legislation that allows the terminally ill the opportunity to pass on their own terms. She spent her final evening with 2 of her children and a pastor, singing hymns, a couple of laughs and a couple of cries. But in the end, we were all blessed that she got to choose her terms…and for that she and her family, will be eternally grateful.
This is an important law that needs to be held in place and respect for individuals, families and communities.
I hope someday this will be a persons right throughout the United States. I have had the honor of witnessing death and find it one of the most Beautiful and honorable things I have ever done. I know some don’t understand but you can trust me dying with dignity and peace is far more pleasant than the horrific paths some must face. This is a great read!
Cindy Dow
These comments show how thoughtful people can be in discussing one of, if not the, most profound scenarios we will all face. Our own inevitable death. I have shared with friends, and family that I hope that when my time comes it is relatively quick. But I also know that in all likelihood, with the benefits of our very good medical system, that my life may well be extended (fortunately) far beyond where it otherwise might have in centuries past.
I hope I get to live a long and happy life. But I also know that the roulette wheel may not be kind to me. Someday, I may have a long slow decline. At some point in that decline, it may well be clear that my death is imminent and that it may lead to many difficult days (for me and my loved ones around me). I hope that we maintain this law so that if I am at a place where I am terminally ill and choose to die on my own terms, that I will have that opportunity. It may be after I use palliative care, or ask to stop treatments, or even receive both palliative care and hospice care. All of these are good services and I hope we sanely make them more available to everyone. But in the end, it should be my choice. And, I believe the underlying cause of death is clearly the underlying illness. Otherwise, whoever takes these drugs would never do so.
Thank you Terri for writing this article and more importantly, thank you to the family for sharing what is a most personal experience.
an amazing story about a beautiful lady and a triumphant ending good for her very proud of anybody that can make this decision
When the time comes I pray I can make the decision to end.my life
.
No drama let’s be done! Hospice.in Florida.is.No picnic! Starvation and dehydration.
Sometimes a miracle can be in the form of dying free of pain and enjoying the last days on your own terms in the way one desires. I hope all states pass this law. I would like to clarify a comment I read previously about Hospice in Florida though. I think there is a misunderstanding about starving and dehydration towards the end of life. In no way does Hospice starve or dehydrate their patients. The body during the dying process no longer needs food or hydration, nor is it desired.This is a natural part of the dying process.
thank you for publishing this article. I don’t personally use conventional healthcare, but each should have a right to do what they feel is best for them.
Interesting to put this beside the demands to force people to be vaccinated who have used the exemption (I am one). I realize that communicable disease isn’t the same as non-communicable disease, but forcing people to put things in their body (or disallowing it) doesn’t seem right. there are alternatives that can bless everyone if people can take a step back and get a handle on the fear.
Maggie is bigger than her body and her form, and her spirit will live in infinitude and eternity, always held in Love, blessing her family, friends, and all with what she was while she was with us.
This should be legal worldwide, no one, NO ONE should stay alive if they don’t want to stay alive.