Brittany Maynard carries a prescription in her wallet. It was written by a doctor in Oregon, one of five states with legal protections for terminally ill patients who want to end their suffering. And in three weeks, she plans to use it to die. Maynard has chosen to die Nov. 1 in her bedroom in Portland, Ore., surrounded by family — her mother and stepfather, her husband and her best friend, who is a physician. She said she wanted to wait until after her husband’s birthday, which is Oct. 30. But she is getting sicker, experiencing more pain and seizures, she told People in an exclusive interview.
via The Washington Post.
Serve Him in the Waiting 
Thank you for bringing this to us! All that can be done now is to intercede for her. I was 29 when the Lord saved me. We need to pray for everyone who is so sick or unhappy that they want to end their lives. So sad and hopeless (it seems)! May the Lord have mercy on Brittany and others in her situation!
LikeLike
Yes, I worked in hospice nursing, and I have seen how excruciating it can be for a family to witness a protracted death. If someone doesn’t know the truth about God, death, eternity, this seems like a logical choice, to cut short the suffering. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way, if when the person breathes their last breath here, they open their eyes in hell. When I was in my first year working in-patient hospice, there was a patient who shared a room with one of the patients I was assigned to. After a while of working in the arena of death and dying, a nurse develops a recognition of signs of imminent death, but I wasn’t that far along yet. When I would go to check on my patient, this other patient in the room was restless and seemed utterly tortured. He seemed nearly to be hallucinating, and I did all I could while I was in there, to speak to him, hold his hand a few minutes and try and comfort him. Through-out my rounds, I saw him several times and each time as the shift progressed, he seemed more frightened and tormented. His face was literally almost a mask of horror. Of course I checked with his nurse also, and he had been given pain meds, etc, so I didn’t know what else could be done, as there was no family member there to sit with him. I got off at midnight and when I came in the next afternoon for my shift, I learned he had died. I realized at that instant, that he probably was seeing “beyond the veil” to where he was headed. I know for a fact people do seem to enter into that place between here and “the other side” in the last moments and hours, if they are at all vocal, they often talk seemingly “out of their head” and report seeing others “over there” beckoning or sometimes frightening them. As a Christian, and still fairly new to all of the ins and outs of hospice nursing, I had done all I knew to do, but what I realize now that I should have done, was to set aside everything else for a few minutes and spoken the gospel to him and prayed with him. Even if he was “beyond this world” there may have been some chance it would get through. So, definitely, I am not without empathy for this lady’s plight. I did go on to pray with many patients during my nursing years, and give the gospel to them. A mission field isn’t always on foreign soil. We are disciples wherever we are. And this fallen world is tragic. But we have the answers for people who are hopeless, and the fields are white unto harvest. In our flesh we can so easily be smug about our own security. We owe it to our Savior to tell others what He did for their sake, because He bore the sin of Brittany, whether she knows it or not, and I believe that means there is a “ticket to heaven” with her name on it, that may unnecessarily go unclaimed by her, for the singular reason that no one told her it was there. That is a much bigger tragedy than the cancer, because it has eternal implications.
LikeLiked by 1 person