Peninsula Daily News News Sources
SEQUIM — A friend of Linda Fleming, the 66-year-old Sequim woman with late-stage 4 pancreatic cancer who became the first known person to use the state’s assisted-suicide law, said Fleming had worked with homeless and mentally ill people.
After being diagnosed with the advanced cancer roughly a month ago, according to the friend, Virginia Peterhansen, Fleming made her first of three required requests to receive lethal drugs under the Death with Dignity Act.
Fleming made her final request — a written one witnessed by two people — on May 15, six days before she died, Peterhansen said.
Another friend of Fleming, Sharon Lake, a neighbor in The Vintage, a Sequim apartment complex for seniors, said that she — after some initial reservations — was one of those who signed the documents attesting to Fleming’s ability to make the decision to end her life.
Fleming had moved to Sequim from Port Angeles about a year ago.
“I know she was not scared about making this choice, but scared about what other people might do,” said Peterhansen in an interview with a reporter with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer Web site, explaining that her friend had been worried about people criticizing her.
Peterhansen and Fleming last saw each other on Wednesday.
“We talked about how much she was missing her dog [a Chihuahua named Seri, which had been away with Fleming’s daughter], how much I was going to miss her,” Peterhansen said.
According to the P-I Web site, Peterhansen said that Fleming had once enjoyed painting and making pottery, had wanted to learn contra dancing, and was excited about a car she recently bought. She love walking with her friends and her dog.
But as Fleming’s cancer progressed, she suffered from more pain, lost weight, and began having difficulty swallowing.
According to the interview with Peterhansen, after her diagnosis Fleming laid the foundation to end her life.
She tracked the dates of her request for lethal drugs on a calendar, Peterhansen said. She told her two daughters of her plan. She gave her car to Peterhansen.
She made arrangements to die in her Sequim apartment, where she lived alone, and said goodbye to her Chihuahua. The dog helped her cope with her arthritis.
“She knew this was the choice was her,” Peterhansen said. “She was a very good person, and she’ll be very missed.”
Lake said she initially balked at signing the documents that said Fleming was mentally competent to make the decision to end her life.
“I’m religious,” Lake, a former dairy farmer, told The Seattle Times. “I wondered, would God forgive us for that?”
But after conferring with her Lutheran minister, she agreed.
“It was very hard on me, but I know this is truly what she wanted to do,” Lake told the Times.
