Doctors make educated guesses about how long a person has left to live after a terminal diagnosis, but no one should take a healthcare provider’s estimate of how many weeks or months someone has left to live as gospel truth. Patients routinely survive long after the day they’re expected to succumb to their illness.
My husband, J.J. Hanson, was one such person. A Marine Corps veteran who saw combat in Iraq, J.J. was diagnosed with stage 4 glioblastoma multiforme, one of the deadliest and most aggressive types of brain cancer, when he was only 33 years old.
Just as J.J. was diagnosed with brain cancer, fellow glioblastoma patient — Brittany Maynard —made headlines for deciding to end her life via assisted suicide. My husband chose a different path, and I’m so grateful he did.
“You don’t just accept it because someone said it,” he asserted about the grim 4 month prognosis doctors had given him. And he survived three years longer than doctors anticipated. Over the course of those three years, we had baby No. 2; our eldest son, James, got to know his father; and I got three more priceless years with the love of my life.
Even so, assisted suicide bills are being pushed across the country at an alarming rate. If passed into law these bills would pressure the poor, sick, and elderly to cut their life short with the aid of a doctor, the very person meant to preserve life — not end it. Members of Congress, however, have just introduced a bill to help push back against these assisted suicide bills and laws that end up targeting vulnerable people.
Read more at Real Clear Policy…