by Diana E. Williams
Amplify Publishing (2024)
ISBN: 979-8891380516
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Traveling Solo is a dizzying narration of what can go wrong with the human body, while to others there may seem to be nothing wrong. The author, Diana Williams wrote it as a call to us to understand that some people, despite their appearing healthy, might with good reason wish not to live. She wants our laws governing medical aid in dying to be more inclusive. In her early sixties, after living for thirty years with an illness that was never diagnosed, she had to travel from California to Switzerland to have the peaceful death she wanted. The book explains her decision and the steps she had to take.  
 
After growing up on the East Coast and working for the Environmental Defense Fund, Diana moved to San Francisco. She’d been a competitive swimmer. She was an avid hiker. She enjoyed running. Then, all at once, without warning, she found she could no longer run. She was overcome by exhaustion. It was followed by unrelenting headaches, chills, night sweats, and brain fog. She’d gain a reprieve only to have the symptoms return. She was first diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, then late stage Lyme Disease, then toxic mold poisoning. A new drug would alleviate her symptoms, but not for long. She was treated by allopathic doctors, alternative practitioners, and several times, unwittingly by quacks. She had three-times-a-week fever treatments, IV infusions of vitamins and supplements, and consultations with nutritionists. She spent a month in a clinic in the Bahamas undergoing treatments with a “Z-7 Mitochondrial Disruptor” and a “Proton Frequency Radiator” only to learn that the treatments were based on unproven science. For every diagnosis, there was someone to dismiss it and suggest a different one. For every proposed treatment, there was someone to scoff. She was often despairing but never wanted to give up.

As a young adult, Diana had backpacked through Zimbabwe and picked pears on a kibbutz in Israel. “My mantra,” she writes, “was a Paul Coelho quote: ‘If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine; it is lethal.’” She had a graduate degree in Counseling Psychology and interacted easily with people. In her late twenties, she found love with her second husband. They had two daughters. During a period when her health seemed stable, they went with their children on a year’s adventure from China to New Zealand. They lived inexpensively and made connections by volunteering. On their return, she worked to raise money to save the coral reefs. She founded a nonprofit organization providing job readiness training at California’s San Quentin Prison.

Diana became progressively more ill and eventually had to stop working. A final devastating blow, came with an accident in which she was thrown off the hood of a car and sustained a traumatic brain injury. Her only relief was sleep, but as soon as she woke, she felt depression. Medications made her sleepy and dizzy. She admitted herself to a psychiatric hospital where it was learned that her depression was caused by physical damage to her brain tissue and that no treatment could alleviate it. Diana spent increasing amounts of time in bed. She withdrew from many of the activities she loved.                                                                                     
The marriage, understandably, began to feel strain, and Diana and her husband separated. She felt acute loneliness.  Some friends walked away. She kept a journal about what was happening and kept all of her medical records. And then, she began to explore ways to die.
California allows medical aid in dying if one has a prognosis of six months or less to live, but her doctors could not agree on which disease she had, let alone how long she would live. Her only option, she decided, was to go to Dignitas in Switzerland, a nonprofit which since 1998, has made it possible to die with the help of a doctor. Dignitas does not accept everyone. They are careful to rule out mental instability. While they do not require a terminal prognosis, they do require that one have “an unendurable incapacitating disorder” or “a disease which will lead to death” or “unbearable and uncontrollable pain.”

Diana applied, spent more than a year submitting medical records, and was accepted. She then needed the courage to tell her family. She loved her family and they loved her. How could she adequately explain to them that she had had a good life but could not go on?

​"Surrendering was an act of compassion for myself,” she writes. She learned of the deep love her daughters, now in their twenties, and mother felt for her (her father died before she could tell him of her plans). Her daughters, ex-husband who still cared for her, and mother traveled with her to Switzerland. Before leaving, she wrapped gifts to be sent to her daughters on their birthdays, with special notes, including a world map paper-clipped to a check, encouraging them to travel together.  

Diana opened her book, written in the first person singular until the last page, with a poem by Raymond Carver:

by Judith Sarah Schmidt, Ph.D.
Full Court Press (2020)
ISBN: 978-1946989796​

Though the title might suggest it, this is not a religious book. It is a book for all of us. Its theme is our spirituality, but in a secular way. Judith Schmidt writes about the transcendental place within us that knows what it is we need in order to heal, and guides us towards accessing it. Her book offers fifty-two chapters containing an essay on an aspect of grief, a suggested meditation on how to think about it, and a prompt for writing in a journal. There are many stories of grief and how survivors have emerged from it. One can read the book as essays only, or move through it reading, meditating, and writing. ​

by Joanne Tubbs Kelly
She Writes Press (2022)
ISBN: 164742089X

Walking Him Home is an account of what it’s like to have a neurodegenerative disease and reach the point of wanting to die. Most approved prescriptions for medical aid in dying are written for persons with cancer, whose six months prognosis is easier to determine. 
​
Joanne Tubbs Kelly describes the dying of her husband, Alan Kelly, from multiple systemic atrophy (MSA), a rare condition of the nervous system that damages the nerve cells in the brain and leads to a loss of balance, gastrointestinal issues, and incontinence.​

by Anita Hannig 
Sourcebooks (May 3, 2022)
ISBN: 1728244919

Books about medical aid in dying are beginning to appear with frequency. It’s as if everyone now--doctors and patients alike--has recognized that we can’t keep pretending that we don’t die. 

Anita Hannig is a cultural anthropologist at Brandeis University where she teaches classes on the cultural dimensions of medicine and the end of life. ​

by Amy Bloom
Random House (March 8, 2022)
ISBN: 978-0593243947

I am inclined to call this book a “page-turner”. But how can that be? It is a book about the author’s husband, Brian, who, by the time he is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, is also told that the process of sinking into severe dementia will be rapid. This vibrant man in his 50s is determined to end his life while he still recognizes and can interact with his wife and those he loves. ​

by Frank Ostaseski
Flatiron Books, ​2017
ISBN‏: ‎978-1250074652

One of the rewarding aspects of medical aid in dying that is mentioned by surviving family members is the opportunity it offers for meaningful conversation before the person they love dies. The day of dying is chosen intentionally, and in the weeks and days leading up to it, truth is spoken. I think about this a lot, because my mother-in-law died from toxic poisoning of the liver in her fifties and her doctors never told us that she was dying. They said, no doubt meaning to be helpful, that “there was always hope.” She died, sooner than expected and without warning, and we had no chance for final conversations. ​

by Diane Rehm
Alfred A. Knopf, 2020
ISBN: 978-0525654759
 
“Palliative and hospice care are amazing at making death easier for people. Yet there are limits. [They] do a really wonderful job; [but] we’ve forgotten that for some patients, the suffering goes on.”

Those are the words of Dr. Lonny Shavelson, Director, Bay Area End of Life Options, as spoken in an interview with Diane Rehm, author of the book, When My Time Comes. ​