Terminally ill Jessica allowed cameras to film her final days (Image: ITV)
A terminally ill woman’s final hours before she chose to have an have been documented in a powerful documentary. Jessica Lantz lived with a rare autoimmune disease for a decade and was receiving palliative care before she took life-ending medication on February 12, aged 43. Her last 47 hours were captured by an film crew in Oregon, , before she bid them goodbye with the words: “Good luck to everyone in the UK.”
Asked why she set a date for her death, Jessica explained: “You can feel yourself dying, not just the pain or the things you associate with being sick, but you can feel your body dying. I don’t think I will live much beyond February at all. It’s terminal, so there’s no real argument. It’s just, do you want to see me in a coma or not?”
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Jessica had dermatomyositis which was slowly wasting away her body. She added: “Depending which way it goes, my kidneys will shut down, I’ll have a major or , or I just won’t be able to breathe, or I’ll starve to death.”
Oregon legalised assisted dying in 1997 and its law has remained broadly unchanged for almost 30 years.
The service is available only to terminally ill adults who are mentally competent and expected to die within six months, with similar criteria and processes to the law proposed for England and Wales.
After being assessed by two doctors and found eligible, Jessica was prescribed medication which she kept in a locked box. It consisted of a sedative and anti-nausea pill, and a container of powder which she mixed with two ounces of apple juice.
Speaking to ITV’s Paul Brand after she had taken the first pill and around 40 minutes before she took the medication to end her life, Jessica said: “I’m not having any second thoughts or doubts. It’s just more overwhelming and sad. I feel like I’m going to miss everybody.”
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She added that the decision allowed her and her loved ones to be “prepared for today” instead of her death being “a surprise in two or three weeks”.
Jessica spent her final moments in privacy with her best friend Wendy, who later told ITV she had died three hours after taking the drugs.
Wendy added: “She drank it and did fall asleep pretty quickly. She slept very peacefully the whole time. It took about three hours. It went just the way she would have wanted it to go.”
Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying Bill is undergoing line-by-line scrutiny and a committee is considering amendments to strengthen the legislation. MPs are expected to vote on the Bill again next month.
The Daily Express crusade supports efforts to change the law.
You can watch the documentary “My Life, My Choice – Tonight” on ITV1 and ITVX on Thursday 6 March at 8.30pm.