Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

GUEST COLUMN:

Please let me die peacefully, not painfully

This year, health reasons forced me to drop out of the primary race for a seat in the Nevada Assembly. I saw it as my last chance to help pass a law that would allow me to die peacefully, rather than in agony, from an aggressive and rare cancer that will end my life soon.

But God has given me one more opportunity to use my voice and ask the legislator who wins this seat and other lawmakers to allow me the option to die without suffering.

I am not a politician. I am a mom, a grandmother, author, speaker and the founder of The Brave and Beautiful Blood Cancer Foundation, living with multiple myeloma. This incurable disease that has taken over my life since 2017 inspired me to run for office in hopes of bringing better specialists and improving the mediocre insurance system in my home state. At the time, doctors gave me a five-year prognosis.

My run for office was my Hail Mary after spending two legislative sessions advocating for a bill that would honor the options of terminally ill people to decide how and when they die. One of these options should be the legal right to request a doctor’s prescription for medication they can take to die peacefully, if their suffering becomes intolerable.

This end-of-life care option is now more important to me than ever.

I am relieved to know that lawmakers are again considering a compassionate bill that would honor the options of terminally ill people to decide how and when they die.

I was very disappointed when similar bills introduced in Nevada did not move forward during the 2019 and 2021 legislative sessions. At the time, I recorded videos in English and Spanish to urge state 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.

I also had the opportunity to travel the state for news conferences, media interviews and meetings with state legislators, including one with the legendary civil rights activist Dolores Huerta and Gov. Steve Sisolak.

But this rare and aggressive cancer has taken a toll on my body.

I am not the same Hanna I was in 2021.

I am tired. I am in pain. I am scared.

I am exhausted, mentally and physically. I am nauseated. I do not have much more time.

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

Terminally ill Nevadans are dying in pain and agony with no other options right now. 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.

Honorable legislators: I urge you to put yourselves in my shoes. I plead that you listen to my story.

I live in fear knowing 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.

I refuse to spend my last days 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 our precious grandbabies, Dominic and Damien, holding my hand in prayer.

There are others like me who need this option now.

I urge you to help me pass this compassionate bill to make what is left of my life — and my death — a peaceful one.

Hanna Olivas is a 48-year-old mother and grandmother who lives in Las Vegas.