I just want to die in peace.
Don’t get me wrong. I love life. I want to continue my career as a professional chef. I want to swim in the ocean, take family cruises and eventually get married, but a brain tumor is ending my life slowly and painfully.
I simply want the option to die without suffering. I want to spare my family the horrors they see me experience today.
I have endured excruciatingly painful treatments to try to cure the brain tumor that has invaded my body. Doctors estimate I have a few months to live.
Living in agony is the hardest part of dying.
I was only 30 years old when doctors diagnosed me with a glioblastoma five years ago. Since then, I have undergone countless treatments and multiple surgeries, only to learn there is no medicine that can cure my illness.
Today, I endure agonizing headaches, back pains, electric shocks all over my body and seizures that leave me bed-ridden with bruises from my falls. The morphine pouch connected to my sciatic nerve does very little to alleviate my pain.
I want the option to self-ingest medication to end this intolerable suffering.
Having this option of medical aid in dying would ease my mind because I would be able to pass peacefully at home, holding my mother’s hand, surrounded by my father, my sisters and my tricolored beagle named Lucy.
Unfortunately, medical aid in dying is not a legally authorized option in my home state of Illinois or in Puerto Rico, where my Catholic parents are taking care of me during the final stage of my life.
I pray to God that He takes me soon. I can’t bear this pain any longer.
But before I die, I have a few requests:
* Legislators in every U.S. state and territory: Please authorize medical aid in dying as an end-of-life option. Dying people in intractable pain have no viable options other than to go back and forth to hospitals, where they poke us over and over, where they give us more pills and connect us to machines that prolong our dying process. I am tired of fighting.
* Doctors: I urge you to listen and to honor your patients’ end-of-life wishes, whether you agree with them or not.
* My fellow Latinos: I ask you to break the cultural taboo of discussing death and medical aid in dying. Talking about death is one of the most important conversations we should have, whether we are dying or not. Terminally ill people should not have to endure needless pain; instead they should be able to see a doctor to request a prescription for medication to end their suffering. Latinos need to stop worrying about being judged. We need to advocate for laws authorizing the option of medical aid in dying.
* My fellow Americans: Please call your legislators, write e-mails and tell them you support laws to authorize medical aid in dying.
* My brothers and sisters in Christ: Please stop referring to medical aid in dying as a sin. I respect those who would make a different decision if they were in my shoes, but I urge you to respect my end-of-life wishes and not impose your values on me.
I’ve been working as a volunteer advocate with the non-profit organization Compassion & Choices to share my story. I also recently reached out to Dan Diaz, the widower of Brittany Maynard. We spoke about their move from California to Oregon to access its Death with Dignity Act. We spoke about my seizures, my falls and my headaches.
We spoke about Brittany’s peaceful death. And the one that I will never have because I am not healthy enough to move to a state where medical aid in dying is authorized. Geography should not dictate how I die.
Miguel Carrasquillo is a 35-year-old professional chef and native Chicagoan who lives in Cidra, Puerto Rico.
