29-year-old Brittany Maynard, who made national headlines this month after announcing her decision to end her life on November 1 by means of assisted suicide under Oregon's Death With Dignity Act, has just announced that she's going to delay the date of her passing.
In a new video, the terminally ill Maynard says, "I still feel good enough. And I still have enough joy and I still laugh and smile with my family and friends enough that it doesn't seem like the right time."
Earlier this week Maynard announced that she had made it to the Grand Canyon and was able to cross that item off her bucket list. Today's announcement comes on what she had previously said is her husband's birthday.
The new video is painful. It includes words from Maynard's husband, shows her talking about the weight she's gained from the drugs she's taking, and it is scored by somber piano music. It appears to have been made in conjunction with the assisted-suicide advocacy group that made her earlier videos. That group, Compassion & Choices, also set up The Brittany Fund in order to raise money through the publicity given to her story to support the spread of Death With Dignity-type laws.
Maynard has stage 4 glioblastoma multiforme, an inoperable form of brain cancer, and in April, while still living in San Francisco, she was given six months or less to live. She earlier said in a CNN op-ed that she fears sticking around too long because of the horrors of what the final stages of her illness will bring. "I could develop potentially morphine-resistant pain and suffer personality changes and verbal, cognitive and motor loss of virtually any kind.” In the video she says she had two seizures in one day last week, one of which left her forgetting her husband's name.
As the Chronicle notes, Maynard says she may still stick to Saturday, November 1, however she is now suggesting she will delay ending her life depending on how much her condition worsens.
Here's her original video, released in early October.