Christy O'Donnell, a Los Angeles attorney and former LAPD sergeant, is most likely going to die soon, and she wants to do so on her own terms.
The 46-year-old single mother is terminal with lung and brain cancer, and was told last month that chemotherapy is no longer and option. She filed a lawsuit last Friday, pleading with the state of California to let doctors prescribe her medicine that would end her life before she succumbs to the disease.
"I am dying within the next months, and I am going to die painfully," O'Donnell told PEOPLE. "I am asking the courts for intervention to issue an order so that a doctor can legally prescribe a medication so that I don't have to die painfully, and so that every moment before I die, I don't have to spend afraid and worried about the painful manner in which I'm going to die."
O'Donnell is working with Compassion & Choices, a pro-dying with dignity organization, on the lawsuit. Compassion & Choices famously worked with Brittany Maynard, a right-to-die advocate who moved to Oregon in order to end her life.
To help get her story out, Compassion & Choices released a YouTube video on Monday that chronicles O'Donnell's fight with lung cancer. In it, she explains how the disease will kill her.
"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," she says in the video. "If I get to a hospital, they'll very painfully put a tube in. They'll drain the fluid from my lung, only to patch me up, send me home and wait until the next time my lung fills up with fluid. And they'll continue to repeat that process and drowning painfully until I die."
Kevin Díaz, national director of legal advocacy at Compassion & Choices, believes that right-to-die advocates needs stories like O'Donnell's and Maynard's in order to keep the fight in the news.
"Christy is a profile in courage for many other dying people who face unbearable suffering in their final days that even the best hospice and palliative care cannot relieve," Díaz said. "As Brittany recognized, these people desperately need the option of medical aid in dying so they can die painlessly, peacefully in their sleep - and they need it now - before it's too late."
O'Donnell knows the legislative process is a lengthy one and that it might not conclude while she is still alive, but the mother explained that she is doing this because she owes it to herself and her family.
"I can't wait. My daughter can't wait. I owe this to myself, and I owe this to my daughter. She's either going to come home and she's going to have to discover my body, or she's going to have to watch me die painfully," O'Donnell said.
She added that money has nothing to do with the lawsuit.
"I want to make sure that people understand: We're not asking for a dime," she said. "We're just asking for help. It's not selfish to not want your child to watch you suffer, and it's not selfish to not want to suffer. And it's not selfish to not want your doctor to have to go to jail for trying to help you."
