LOS ANGELES (AFP) - An American woman with terminal cancer whose video about planning to kill herself on Nov 1 went viral, says she will hold on a little longer before taking her own life.
A spokesman said Brittany Maynard, 29, will likely end her life with a powerful combination of drugs in early November, as she is experiencing increasingly debilitating headaches as a result of brain cancer.
"I still feel good enough and I still have enough joy and I still laugh and smile with my family and friends enough that it doesn't seem like the right time right now," Maynard said in a new six-minute video.
"But it will come, because I feel myself getting sicker. It's happening each week," she said.
In January, Brittany Maynard, 29, was given six months to live due to brain cancer, and told her death would be long and painful because of the aggressive nature of the disease.
She was trying for a first child with her husband Dan at the time, but gave up on that hope due to the cancer.
Maynard and her husband, who had just married when she began having severe headaches, moved from their home in California to Oregon, one of a handful of states with a right-to-die law in force.
A doctor could therefore prescribe her the medication she needs to end her own life, surrounded by her family in the bedroom she shares with her husband.
Earlier in October a first video went viral. It has now been viewed more than nine million times on YouTube.
Maynard is currently on medication to limit the swelling of her brain, but which has the side effect of making her gain weight.
A spokesman for Compassion and Choices, the right-to-die organisation helping Maynard manage her final days, said she will likely end her life in the next week or two.
"Brittany's seizures are becoming more debilitating and frequent, so obviously her family worries about her suffering," spokesman Sean Crowley told AFP.
"Nov 1 always was a tentative date. It is now early November. Whether Brittany takes aid-in-dying medication depends upon if her dying process becomes unbearably painful."
