3 Patients with Terminal Cancer Sue State of California as They Seek Pain-Free Death

Three California residents afflicted with different types of advanced or terminal cancer, together with a doctor, filed a lawsuit last week against the state of California as they asked the court to allow them to end their lives peacefully and without pain through the aid in dying method.

In their court pleading, the four plaintiffs – who are represented by the nonprofit end-of-life advocacy organization Compassion & Choices – assert that the constitution of California and existing state laws should allow doctors to prescribe terminal patients who are still mentally competent like them medications that "they can take in their final days to end their dying process painlessly and peacefully, ending unbearable pain and suffering."

The plaintiffs were identified as Christy Lynne Donorovich-O'Donnell of Sta. Clarita, Elizabeth Antoinette Melanie Gobertina Wallner of Sacramento, Wolf Alexander Breiman of San Diego, and physician Lynette Carol Cederquist. The lawsuit was filed last Friday with the Superior Court in San Diego.

The aid in dying method pertains to "recognized medical practice of offering mentally competent, terminally ill persons medication that they may choose to take to bring about a quick and peaceful death," medical sources say.

The lawsuit is asking the court to declare Section 401 of the California Penal Code illegal. That section states that "every person who deliberately aids, or advises, or encourages another to commit suicide, is guilty of a felony."

"Plaintiffs seek a declaration that Section 401 is unlawful and unconstitutional as applied to doctors who aid mentally competent, terminally ill patients by providing medication that the patients can self administer if and when their suffering becomes unbearable, and they seek an injunction prohibiting Defendants from enforcing Section 401 against such doctors," the lawsuit said.

Because of the worsening medical conditions of the residents, the lawsuit is also asking the court to expedite court proceedings.

O'Donnell, 43, has a stage 4 lung cancer that has spread to her brain, liver, spine, and rib since being diagnosed with the disease in June last year. Her doctor said she has less than six months to live.

"Christy is morphine intolerant and cannot benefit from many of the most common and most effective forms of pain management," according to the lawsuit.

O'Donnell is a civil rights attorney and is a former sergeant in the Los Angeles Police Department.

"The most likely way that I'm going to die with the lung cancer is that my left lung will fill with fluid, I'll start drowning in my own fluid," says O'Donnell in a video released by Compassion & Choices.

She adds, "I spend an inordinate amount of time being afraid of the pain that I'm going to endure. All of that time that my mind spends thinking about that, I am not living. I don't want to die [but] I should be able to get a prescription [for aid-in-dying medication], have that peace and never think about it 'til the day I'm ready to die."

Wallner has stage 4 colon cancer that has metastasized to her liver and lung while Breiman has multiple myeloma or blood cancer.

"The situation is urgent for terminally ill Californians like Christy because they cannot afford to wait for relief from unbearable suffering in their last days," said Cederquist, who is a doctor of internal and hospice and palliative medicine.

The lawsuit asserts that medical aid in dying is a more peaceful alternative to palliative sedation. Palliative sedation, a legal medical practice in California, is done by medicating the patient into a coma and withholding nutrition and fluids until the patient dies.