I want to die peacefully, not painfully

In 2017, I was expecting the birth of my fifth child, enjoying my new husband and living life to the fullest in my home in Las Vegas. Then came a severe pain in my bones and skull, followed by the diagnosis of the disease that likely caused the stillbirth of my baby boy just two weeks before my due date: multiple myeloma, an aggressive, incurable and terminal cancer. Doctors gave me five years to live.

I am not afraid of what comes next as I prepare to live what doctors say is the last year of my life. For now, I continue to undergo different types of treatments to have a better quality of life.

But the blood cancer is taking a toll on my body.

I am tired. I am in pain. I have a lesion in my neck.

My focus is to live my last days surrounded by my four adult children and two grandbabies.

I do not want to be connected to machines, catheters and tubes that will cause more pain and vomiting that will only debilitate my body. When my Lord calls me, I want to die peacefully, surrounded by my husband and our two sons, two daughters and precious grandchildren, Dominic and Damien, holding my hand in prayer.

I am relieved to know Nevada lawmakers are once again considering the End of Life Options Act (Assembly Bill 351). The bill would honor the options of terminally ill people to decide how and when they die, when their death is inevitable. One of these options should be the legal right to request a doctor’s prescription for medication they can decide to take to die peacefully, if their suffering becomes intolerable.

I was very disappointed when a similar bill introduced in Nevada ran out of time and did not move forward during the 2019 legislative session. At the time, I recorded videos in English and Spanish to urge Nevada lawmakers and other states to pass laws that would allow terminally ill adults to have the option of medical aid in dying to peacefully end intolerable suffering.

This compassionate bill is more important to me than ever.

Terminally ill Nevadans are dying in pain and agony with no other options. Government or state agencies should not decide how much suffering is too much to bear at life’s end, or tell us how much pain is acceptable. No one should be able to tell me how I get to say my last goodbye.

That is why I am committed to helping pass the End of Life Options Act during the 2021 legislative session.

But I am not the same Hanna I was in 2019. I am exhausted, mentally and physically. I am nauseated. I am vomiting and I am in pain.

There are others just like me who need this option, so I will keep up my fight, and I hope the Legislature takes the opportunity to make my life — and my death — peaceful.

I know that my spinal column will collapse and shoot unbearable pain throughout my body, including my skull, jaw, teeth, ribs and legs. I am terrified of blood clots, bone cracks from just lying in bed in hospice, as tumors grow throughout my body. I do not want to leave my family with those horrific images as I die slowly in unbearable pain.

I am tired of the endless hospital visits, CT scans, MRIS, PET scans, biopsies and blood tests.

Nevada legislators: I urge you to put yourselves in my shoes and listen to my story. Think of what I am going through as you consider your support of this compassionate bill.

Our Lord put us on this earth to live abundantly, healthy and peacefully. His wish is for his children not to suffer and this is my wish as well.