Santa Clarita single-mom, civil rights attorney and former LAPD sergeant, Christy O’Donnell, is dying from brain, liver, lung, rib and spine cancer and is continuing to fight for the right to have the option of medical aid in dying.

O’Donnell came into KHTS AM-1220 Monday evening to talk about her experience of fighting to change the law in the state of California for herself and others who suffer from terminal illnesses.

O’Donnell was told she had Stage IV lung cancer two days after she closed escrow on her home in Valencia and one day after her daughter, Bailey Donorovich, turned 20 years old.

O’Donnell woke up the morning after Donorovich’s 20th birthday party, unable read. She went to the emergency room where she was told her fate just hours later.

From left to right: Jessica Boyer, DJ T. Katz, Christy O’Donnell.

“Essentially, in a few hours, Bailey and my life had been turned upside down,” O’Donnell told KHTS AM-1220 DJ T. Katz.

When she was diagnosed, O’Donnell had three brain tumors along with the lung cancer. One of the tumors was the size of a golf ball.

O’Donnell had been a non-smoker her whole life and she was a vegetarian, runner, swimmer. She tried to “do everything right.” She was the first in her family’s history to be diagnosed with cancer.

O’Donnell has received chemotherapy almost every week for 12 months, she’s had brain surgery and tried to go for a clinical trial.

“I’ve explored everything, not just in the U.S. but outside the U.S. as well,” she said. “I have survived with cancer, stage IV for one year and one month. If anybody could tell me that there was anything I could do, with medical evidence to back it up, to tell me that I could live to see my grandchildren, I would do it.”

O’Donnell has “interrogated” her doctors to understand what will happen when the chemotherapy stops working. Eight weeks after the chemo stops working, O’Donnell’s liver could shut down.

“I’ve read everything there was about my disease, I’ve become about as medically knowledgable as I can, I’ve researched the new therapies, talked to different people,” O’Donnell said. “Anyway that I die, as it’s been described to me by several oncologists, specialists, neurosurgeons — and I’ve consulted them all — is very painful. If I died from liver failure, especially what will happen is I will stop being hungry, my stomach will become extremely bloated, my legs could become so bloated that essentially the skin on my legs splits, which is all extremely painful.

“If my lung tumor grows faster and that’s the way I die, my lung will essentially fill with fluid, my own fluid, and it’ll be like drowning.”

Donorovich already knew about Oregon’s Death with Dignity law and O’Donnell was familiar with the law because she had lived in Oregon for a short time.

“We considered it, we considered moving to Oregon, my daughter was willing to do it,” O’Donnell said. “I, as a mom, vetoed that idea because her entire support system, really, is here in California and even more so here in Santa Clarita.”

O’Donnell and her daughter decided to educate themselves and are now asserting the California constitution and state law allow terminally ill adults the option of medical aid in dying.

“It’s not that I’m personally afraid of pain for myself only, I wouldn’t have joined LAPD and survived that whole time if I was just personally afraid of pain,” O’Donnell said. “Knowing the pain I’m going to suffer inevitably, there’s no way to get around that, and worse yet, knowing that I have to look into my daughter’s eyes while she sees my body deteriorate and while I’m in pain. There’s not a single child that should have to experience that, whether they’re an adult or not.”

Compassion & Choices is a leading nonprofit organization that offers free consultation, planning resources, referrals and guidance and work to protect and expand options at the end of life, according to the website. Compassion & Choices officials are working with O’Donnell as the suit continues to move forward.

“I hear from thousands of people around the world but it’s only people here in the state of California that can truly express what they feel, what they believe, and if they believe in this issue, even if they decide this is not right for them, if they feel that I or any other person who is terminally ill should this right, they have to let their legislators know that they want this desperately,” O’Donnell said. “Even the fight we’ve fought so far, we have moved mountains.”

O’Donnell is asking anyone in the state of California who feels this suit should continue to move forward, to send an email to their representative. It takes 30 seconds on the Compassion & Choices website to fill out personal information such as a name and email address and then a prewritten letter is sent to every representative in California.

“There are so many warriors out there who have been fighting this battle for longer than I have,” O’Donnell said. “Before Bailey and I decided to speak out, we knew that it was highly unlikely that any legislation would pass because of how long it takes or even with the lawsuit, that there was a good possibility that none of that was going to be done in my lifetime because I have such a short prognosis but very rarely are we, as a human being, placed in a position where you can have a positive impact on your entire nation and possibly the world. So, to think even for one moment of being too selfish to speak out for something that we both strongly believed in, that was not an option for us.”

O’Donnell spent her 47th birthday in a Sacramento courtroom last week, to hear a judge dismiss a case that she and two other plaintiffs have put their hearts and souls into.

“As far as the lawsuit, we have not given up on that.” O’Donnell said. “We expect the judgment be out this week and we will be filing an appeal. We are going to try to expedite the appeal. That will continue whether I am here or not.”

More information about the suit and Compassion & Choices can be found at the website.