My husband, Gary, was diagnosed with Stage 4 lymphoma in 2019, at the age of 57. Gary was a vegan, an artist and graphic designer and an avid hiker. He loved life, and we did everything we could to extend it after his devastating diagnosis.
For more than three years, Gary fought hard and underwent a number of treatments. He began a chemotherapy regimen but the cancer was drug-resistant. He underwent a bone marrow transplant.
We tried a difficult, painful and frightening immunotherapy treatment. He continued to fight and underwent chemotherapy again. In January 2023, a scan revealed the lymphoma was back.
Gary was so weak at this point. We were in and out of the emergency room, and we knew his life would end soon. We had always known about from our research and thought we might need to go to Oregon or Switzerland if it got that bad.
A month before that fateful scan, we learned it was , and that Kaiser Permanente had an end-of-life options program. We wondered why we hadn’t been told about it earlier, considering the End of Life Option Act in 2016. The law allows residents who are at least 18 years old and who have a terminal illness with a life expectancy of six months or less to request medication that will hasten their death.
Unfortunately there’s limited public awareness about medically assisted death; a recent study found only a quarter of the California seniors polled even knew about it. It’s also hampered by too few practitioners per capita and too sparse support b.