His greatest fear when he first found out that cancer was eating away his body was that he'd suffer a slow, painful death. The only way Sandy could overcome that fear was to know he could control his time of dying.
No doctor can prescribe death in the United States, except in Oregon. So Sandy had an out-of-state friend with a medical background purchase him a lethal pill concoction for less than $50.
The power to die gave Sandy great relief, allowing him to live the way he wanted to, right up until the end. He and Joann, his wife of 43 years, hit the road in their RV and traveled through New Mexico. But after attending a wedding, he started to show signs that the end was near.
Doctors at a hospital in Santa Fe wanted to check Sandy in, but Joann knew it was time to get him home to Denver.
Sandy and Joann's younger son had been in Japan, but he made it to Denver Saturday night, just in time to have dinner and see his father. Sandy went into a coma Sunday morning and was gone by noon.
"Look at the peace of mind it gave him and he didn't even use them," Joann said of the pills.
Sandy was born and died on the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur. He would've turned 63 next Monday.
Before Sandy died, he became an advocate and donor for the right-to-die movement; to learn more about this subject, check out this June article that featured him. In lieu of flowers, Sandy requested that donations be made to Compassion & Choices, a non-profit group that advocates for a patient's right to hasten death as opposed to undergoing unbearable suffering.
A bill in Vermont to establish an Oregon-style law allowing doctors to prescribe lethal medications to the terminally ill is still pending. That's not the case in Colorado. -- Luke Turf
