Good evening, everyone. My name is brittany, the Events Manager at politics and prose. I would like to thank all of you for coming out tonight. I want to especially thank you for supporting an independent bookstore like politics and prose. [applause] get ready to clap again, and a nonprofit like this. [applause] your attendance at events like this is truly vital to us and we literally would not be here without you so we wanted to know how much we appreciate you and your choices. I am so excited to introduce tonights event because it is not a secret amongst my friends or coworkers how much i love and admire diane rehm. She began her radio career in 1973 as a volunteer for w amu and is grown into the producer host in d. C. Icon we all know today. She is the author of several books including finding my voice, on my own, life with maxie and of course the book you are here for tonight, when my time comes. Which addresses the urgent contestant because of the right to die movement. Through interviews with terminally ill patients and with physicians, spouses, relatives and representatives of those who vigorously opposed the movement she gives voice to a broad personally linked to the reality of medical aid in dying. The book presents the argument before and against that are propelling the current debates across the country about whether to adopt laws allowing those who are dying to put into their suffering. Moderating tonights event is another friendly face of wamu, coach. [applause] host of the show as well as a politics hour. He has shared the board of the Public Access corporation of washington, d. C. Since 1997 and also served on the board of the library of Congress American center. So before we welcome our speakers to the stage tonight we would like to treat you to a short trailer of the documentary which is also called when my time comes that corresponds with the book. Enjoy. What is death . What options do i have if any. What will my death be like. People like you and me have been considering questions as long as there have been human beings. Today some of us are willing to speak openly about such things but many of us are not. We live in a culture that seems to hide from mortality, this is the most difficult experience for a patient and their families. Speaking about death and dying is complicated for people and it takes a certain amount of willingness to be volatile. This conversation are not actually about dying. They are about the quality of our lives. Everybodys idea is to die quickly and not have any exponential suffering but that is not available for many of us. 25 of people who die with chronic illness die with uncontrolled pain. I will die of breast cancer. One of the scariest things about that is you have no control. But you can control how you die. I can control how we die. It is a medical treatment that enables a person who is dying who has exhausted all hope for a cure and is close to an imminent death to help them die in comfort, and peace and with reduced suffering. When somebody is thinking about aid in dying, they are not thinking about it casually. I think this is a very difficult debate for a lot of people. Some people dont feel its an appropriate thing for a doctor to do i dont know whether i would use it but i know i would like to have a choice. This is between an individual and her family and doctor. A good conversation goes a long way. But there is a hard one. Most people would rather not talk about death, they would rather push it out of their minds. But i believe we must talk about it. Thinking about what i would like to have at the end of my life is very important and sharing my wishes with my family, my friends, my physicians, i believe will bring comfort to us all when my time comes. [applause] now please help me welcome to the stage diane rehm in kojo nnamdi. [applause] good evening. I would like to acknowledge the presence here of dianes husband john, john thank you so much for joining us. [applause] also the presence of the manager, jj. [applause] and wamu Staff Members are also here strangled among you, theres other support systems that diane and i have come to rely on over the years that we would like to think them for coming through. Would you care to stand, all the wamu employees. [applause] thank you. I have known diane rehm for about 30 years. I knew her before i started working on wamu, i was hosting a talkshow and diane and i were guest on each other shows. And she was one of the people who strongly encourage me, not strongly, demanded. [laughter] that i come to wamu. In the person i knew before i came to wamu, i considered and very genteel woman. When i came to wamu in 1998, i found that diane was indeed a gentlewoman that one made of solid steel. Because in that year, 1998 diane started struggling with something called schismatic dysphonia which called he causeo lose her voice. You would think anybody who made a living by talking stricken with schismatic dysphonia would be ending their career. Not this woman of steel. She fought it, she underwent four years very painful treatments that caused her to be off the air occasionally for short periods of time but then she always came back and she stayed coming back. Until her absences were less and less frequent and they were less and less long. She fought through that. And then her then husband john got parkinsons disease. And in this book, when my time comes, diane details the painandsuffering he undertook and i assumed that the nature of the experience for her is what started her on this journey, it turned out that i was wrong. So diane start by telling us about your mother. Good evening, it is so wonderful to see you all and kojo nnamdi. Thank you so much for being here. You are absolutely right, my journey began when i was much younger, i was 19, actually i was 16 when the doctors told me that my mother was dying. A 16yearold does not quite grasp that reality and so i did a lot of praying and a lot of looking to the stars and wondering, what is death going to be. Well, for my mother who was 49 when she died and i was 19 it was a great deal of suffering. She begged to die, she begged to die in her hospital bed being drained over and over and over again of fluid caused by, we are not sure what. Whether it was liver, cancer, cirrhosis of the liver which the doctors are all assured her it mustve been because she was an alcoholic. And i assure you she had two drinks a year at christmas and on new years a shot of whiskey with my father. As she lay in that bed having been drained once again of fluid that made her look as though she were 11 months pregnant, she begged to die and i can remember rubbing her feet and crying insane amendment i want to go before you do, i dont want you to die and then on new years eve of that year my then husband and i went to Georgetown Hospital about 10 00 oclock at night before we were supposed to go to a new years eve party, i did not want to go, i did not feel as though i wanted to go but i went, first to the hospital and when i saw the doctor who was her doctor, i said to him, he said have you seen your mother and i said well we went in to see her but she was sound asleep and i did not want to wake her and he said i want you to go back in that room, i want you to let her know you are here and i said that doctor she does not sleep well, i do not want to wake her and he said go in and wake her. The reels were up on her bed and i said amendment i am here and i think she was so out of it she kind of waved me away, i think the doctor knew she was going to die that night and therefore the next day my husband and i just moved into a new apartment had no telephone, his brother came knocking on the door saying you must get to the hospital, we raced there and iran across the parking lot and got there 20 minutes too late. She was gone. I think that began my really strong feelings that people should not have to suffer. You said you have been a lifelong advocate of patient autonomy. How come . I think when the doctor told me that my mother was dying, i had gone into see him, my dad had taken me, i had an ear infection. And i could use some pretty choice words but i will not. Legally she cannot. [laughter] he punched through the infection in my ear and i screamed and then after i had come down i said to them please tell me about my mother and he said she will be gone in 18 months. Just like that. And for me that sort of harsh way of speaking with a young person about lifeanddeath kind of turned me off to the way doctors assume godlike positions with their patients or the children and i think for me its been a lifelong strikeall to make sure that i speak up around doctors and say what is and what is not and i certainly did with john. Did your activist on medical aid in dying flow naturally from your feeling on patient economy and in johns condition leads you to intensify . John, as kojo nnamdi said he died parkinsons in fact, he died starving himself and drinking no liquid for ten days. I watched him do that for ten days. He felt he lost all dignity, he could no longer feed himself or bathe himself or toilet himself. And he said to me one day i am ready to die and we called in the doctor and our son and our daughter, a physician herself was on the phone from boston and he said john said im ready to die, doctor will you help me. And the doctor at the time in a nursing home in maryland the doctor said nor the only thing you can do for your self is to stop eating, drinking water, taking medication, you can go for a long time without food but within a very short period the lack of water destroys the organs. And i watched for that ten days as my husband of 54 years declined and showed on his face though never crying out showed on his face the agony that that death cause for him. He died in 2014, in january of 2016 joe, a Film Producer and his executive came to me saying that they had planned to do a documentary on the right today. And joe told me just the other day he was surprised at how readily i agree to do it. Before we got to the elevator as he was leaving i said i am in. And that was three years ago, for those three years we have worked together on this documentary film, three minutes of which you have just seen the book has just come out or comes out tomorrow and that is the result of our effort. A question you asked many others in this book, i will now ask you. What is your idea of a good death. It is a question that our director really wanted to ask each and every one of the more than 40 people, we interviewed around the country these patients or doctors or priest or members of the clergy, what do you consider a good death . For myself i would consider a good death as one that is peaceful, painless, quiet perhaps having a party beforehand. Having lots of champagne, having my husband, my children, my grandchildren, my dearest friends beside me, holding hands, telling them each what they mean to me, that would be a good death. In order to make sure that you have a ptolemy in the process, in order to make sure there is absolutely no mistake made about your desires, you recruited your grandson been, tell us what you told ben to do. During the filming of the documentary, which by the way will be shown on Public Television a year from now that is in the spring of 2021. Ben was using his cell phone and i had asked my daughter, his mother for permission to do th this, i dont do anything without asking my daughter. [laughter] for her permission. If you ever had the experience of diane asking your permission to do anything, you would understand its not just asking. Its very important with grandchildren and with children to ask permission and jenny granted it. I said ben, i would like to speak with you now please, take out your iphone as i was speaking with ben about my own desires ben was being filmed by our director photography dave and i told ben exactly what i wanted, recorded for posterity but most especially for my two children, Matt Unterman husband, my grandchildren, i wanted everybody to be aware if i had , this is very controversial. I know. If i begin showing signs of alzheimers, if i had an incurable illness, if i was diminishing in ways that i could go over again enjoy the fullness of life, i wanted to go. And i wanted them to know that i would want to go. And i read to ben a paragraph that i had read that and morrow lindbergh had read to her children, she had written it, she never actually read it, her daughter found the paragraph after she died and i quote that paragraph in the book because it was so meaningful to me saying if there is nothing that can be done, please and my life humanely, please do not use extraordinary measures and please follow my wishes. What i am hoping this book does and are documentary does is to get people to talk about the most taboo subject in the world death and dying. We are so afraid to talk about it, we pretend it is not going to happen, i said in a store in massachusetts i said reaching if you play not to die. And then there was a chuckle as though we often get kind of funny. But some people think and especially young people think they are going to live forever. John and i because of my family history, my father died 11 months after my mother did. Your mother died at 49 years old and my father died 11 months later of a broken heart. Johns mother and father each committed suicide. My motherinlaw at 92 and my fatherinlaw is 72. So death was something that was part of our dialogue. This book and film will get people talking. The book certainly did it to me because even though my wife and i had already had wills and had living wills and those living wills indicated that we do not want to be resuscitated after reading this book i realized one has to do more than that. Much more. One has to be very, very specific about what one wants in that situation and one has to have a conversation with one Family Member about that and in your case it made ben record the conversation so it will last forever but its just an ongoing part of diane programming me for the rest of my life. [laughter] lets talk about some of the people you touched who made that decision and then well talk about more skeptical. Lets start what was close to home for you . Mary klein who had been tested Ovarian Cancer and stella, close to your old neighborhood. They do or did indeed, mary klein was so active and such in her partners, her wifes eyes, such a strong marvelous talented person and carried on her life in such a fabulous way when she discovered she had Ovarian Cancer, she did in fact go through numerous treatments, many radiations and chemotherapy treatments until the doctor said there is really nothing more we can do. And mary at that time because there was no right to die here in d. C. , she and her partner went to work with mary to bring this idea to the board. Now mary, assuming she got elected wanted to bring this to the board but had been persuaded by other Council Members to hold off for a bit. But mary became inpatient and mary klein became the perfect advocate to come forward to talk about her own illness and the fact that she did not want to suffer, she had done everything that she could to try to stay alive but knew eventually and shortly she was going to die and did not want to die suffering. She testified, she lobbied, she wrote letters and finally the district of columbia, city Council Voted so that now d. C. Has a medical aid in dying law, when we began this process in 2016, just three years ago there were three states at the top that had medical aid in dying, now because people like mary, because of people like britney in california who had to move to oregon to obtain medical aid in dying, now there are nine states plus the district of columbia which has medical aid in dying. Other states as well. They will follow suit before long. [applause]. Thank you. Medical dying law on the books. Problem solved for mary klein wrong. Then you have to find a physician who will do it was willing to do it. Tell them about marys odyssey in that regard. Diane mary klein looked and looked and looked and finally found a physician who was willing to work with her in this position, she has found or is now my physician. [laughter]. Because she believed in medical aid in dying. I have now turned to her. But there are very few physicians initially, you have to have a registry. And you have to list your name as a physician willing to carry out medical aid in dying. And very few physicians willing to put their names out there in public. But now we have a few, very few, and the medication is very very difficult to get a hold of. One thing to know once it off of the market, by one of our Drug Companies, asked me why and i cannot answer it. Once it fentanyl was taken off of the market, and number of pharmacies began to create their own oceans and now, you have to really find it through a physician. It is not easy. I am hoping that process will become easier as time goes on. After all, for 22 years, that number of people, who had applied for medical aid in dying, and received the medication, only two thirds of those people have actually used it. One third has had the medication and have chosen not to use it. Theres not been a single case brought of any sort of coercion, or pressure or illegal activity on anyones part. Now lets talk about folks who are against it. It. Host that where i was just getting because in the case of the dc legislation, your neighbor, someone who lives in the same building you live in, she testified in favor and she was dismayed, that all of the physicians who testified, were against it. You had a conversation with mary kleins physician who is now your physician she told you about conversation she had had, and i guess, but why did all of these physicians who testified here, oppose it. Diane for a number of reasons. I think many go back to the idea that physicians should do no harm. Now, let us begin to wonder in his head, harm, exists. Doesnt exist in the mind and the heart of the patient, who made the receiving one more treatment that does no good. Does it exist in the mind of the doctor who feels solid strike. Lets just try this one more thing. There is a wheel that patients can get onto especially those who are suffering from serious cancer diagnoses, who try one treatment after another. The church and most especially, the Roman Catholic church. Host because you testified in massachusetts in favor of this bill. Diane in maryland as well. It. Host in the case of massachusetts, you also talk about a Catholic Priest in massachusetts. And one of these longer conversations in the book as a matter of fact, what rationale did not offer for the churches opposition. Diane i must say, to a certain extent, i agree with the churches physician that if you believe that god should be the only decider, i support you. I support you 100 percent. If you as a patient, believe you should have every single treatment that medical scie