Today would have been Brittany Maynard's 30th birthday

Brittany Maynard chose not to live to see her 30th birthday. Instead, on November 1, she used Oregon's death-with-dignity law to end her life on her own terms with prescribed medication before her suffering from terminal cancer could get worse. As Maynard's mother recently wrote, Brittany made a choice "to die gently rather than suffer physical and mental degradation and intense pain."

I respect that choice.

As I wrote in a recent column, when a pet becomes ill to the point where it is near death or suffering uncontrollably, a veterinarian will not think twice before recommending that the pet be euthanized, to put the animal out of its misery. So why do we treat our dying pets with more mercy than we treat our dying people?

If there is a heaven, I hope Brittany is having her best birthday ever.