When CBS News visited Barbara Goodfriend’s home in New Jersey, it was crowded with family and friends — a place that seemed full of life. So it was hard to process that it was also a place where she was determined to die just 24 hours later.
“It’s been a week of family, friends. We’ve done a lot of crying, all of us, but we’ve laughed. We’ve enjoyed being together,” Goodfriend said.
Last April, Goodfriend was diagnosed with ALS, or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, a disease that attacks the nervous system and robs people of their muscle control. The 83-year-old widow spent decades working in fashion while raising her only daughter. After a doctor told her she might not live through the fall, she deteriorated quickly and suffered falls that caused bruises on her face.
Rather than suffer, Goodfriend has chosen what’s known as “Medical Aid in Dying,” or MAID. A doctor prescribes a mixture of lethal medication. The patient must have six months or less to live, be of sound mind and must administer it themselves. The procedure is different than euthanasia — when a doctor gives a patient a lethal injection — which is illegal in the U.S.
Goodfriend says she doesn’t want to die, but she also doesn’t want to continue living with a terminal disease.
“What am I going to give this up for? To be in a wheelchair? To have a feeding tube? I wish I had more time to live, but I don’t want more time as a patient,” Goodfriend said. “I hope that something will get done, something will be accomplished, so that others can have the privilege that I’m having.”
Dying with medical assistance is currently legal in 10 states and Washington, D.C., but eight other states are considering similar laws this year, according to the nonprofit Death with Dignity.
Dr. Robin Plumer has attended nearly 200 deaths in New Jersey, where MAID was made legal in 2019. The law doesn’t require Goodfriend to have a doctor at her bedside on her final day, but she wanted Plumer there.
“You’re going to drink this medicine and drift off into sleep and you’re going to just feel all the love and support,” Plumer said.
Goodfriend says no one tried to talk her out of it. Her daughter, Carol, helped her through the process.
“I think the hardest part in all of this, for me as her only child, is to support something so difficult and so contrary to what you want to do. The ultimate love that you can give somebody is to respect their wish, to live the way they wanna live, and to die the way they want to die,” Carol said.
Goodfriend’s last day of life was spent with her loved ones in a room full of unmistakable emotion. But the calmest one there was the woman in bed who’d made the choice to die.
“I’m not afraid of dying…I was afraid of living,” Goodfriend said.
