
(Compassion and Choices/BrittanyFund.org)
By April Dembosky
State lawmakers are renewing a call to give terminally ill patients more say over how and when they die. Senators Lois Wolk of Davis and Bill Monning of Santa Cruz introduced the "End of Life Option Act" on Wednesday. The bill would allow physicians to prescribe lethal medication to patients who request it.
“Seeing a daughter suffer and die slowly is torture,” said Robert Olvera, whose daughter, Emily Rose, died of leukemia last year at age 25.
The last four months of her life, she was bedridden, blind, and plagued by excruciating headaches that no medicine would alleviate. Olvera, a doctor, says his daughter wished she'd had the option to end her own life.
“'Give me some pills, so I can go to sleep, Daddy. No one should have to live like this,'” Olvera remembers his daughter saying. “She suffered horribly as I sat next to her not being able to do anything.”