Brittany Maynard, from Portland in the US, was diagnosed in April with a stage 4 malignant brain tumour, an aggressive form of cancer, and given six months to live.

She also learned how she could suffer in the end, losing her ability to speak and use her own body. So, earlier this month, she made plans to die on her own terms.

Ms Maynard had set her death date for November 1, when she was going to take medication prescribed by her doctor and die at her home in Oregon, one of five states in the US with legal protections for terminally-ill patients who want to end their suffering.

But in a new six-minute video released online, Ms Maynard now implies she has had a change of heart about the date. While she says she is still committed to ending her life when she feels the time is right, that time might not be this weekend.

"If November 2 comes along and I've passed, I hope my family is still proud of me and the choices I made," she says.

"And if November 2 comes along and I'm still alive, I know that we will just still be moving forward as a family, like, out of love for each other, and that decision will come later."

In the past few weeks, Ms Maynard has been fulfilling items on her bucket list. She visited the Grand Canyon, posting photos online showing her kissing her husband Dan, 43, hiding behind her mother and posing for a family portrait.

In the new video, Ms Maynard said that, while she felt herself getting sicker, she was still well enough to enjoy time with her family.

"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, but it will come because I feel myself getting sicker, it's happening each week," Ms Maynard says in the video, which was produced and released by end-of-life choice advocacy group Compassion and Choices.

Ms Maynard has become a prominent spokeswoman for the "death with dignity" movement, which advocates that terminally ill patients be allowed to receive medication that will let them die on their own terms.

She has attracted significant criticism for her stance, she said.

"When people criticise me for not waiting longer, or, you know, whatever they've decided is best for me, it hurts," she said. 

But Ms Maynard says her worst fear is to have her "autonomy taken away from me by my disease because of the nature of my cancer".

She also speaks of her wishes for her family, including her mother and her husband after her death.

"If all my dreams came true I would somehow survive this, but I most likely won't, so beyond that, having been an only child for my mother, I want her to recover from this and not break down, you know, not suffer from any kind of depression," an emotional Ms Maynard says in the video.

"My husband is such a lovely man. I understand everyone needs to grieve, but I want him to be happy, so I want him to have a family and I know that might sound weird, but there's no part of me that wants him to live out the rest of his life just missing his wife. So I hope he moves on and becomes a father," she says.

At the time of her diagnosis, Ms Maynard was living in San Francisco with her husband. Doctors prescribed full brain radiation. She looked at the side effects, alternative treatments, and even hospice care, and instead chose doctor-assisted death.

However, California, like most states, does not have a law allowing terminal patients to end their lives. So she and her family relocated to Oregon, where she qualified for doctor-assisted suicide.

Some opponents of physician-assisted suicide have expressed moral and religions concerns.

Others worry that patients who are depressed might use such laws to end their mental suffering instead, while others argue that her death is being exploited by advocates of the cause.

"Assisted suicide movement leaders are always on the lookout for attractive cases to further their cause, and clearly believe they have one in Maynard because of her youth, beauty, and the tragedy of her condition," Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow with the the Discovery Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism, wrote for the National Review Online.

Fairfax Media with the Washington Post

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