Terminally ill woman fulfills wish on bucket list

PORTLAND, Ore. -- A 29-year-old terminally ill woman who plans to take her lifeunder Oregon's death-with-dignity law has fulfilled a wish on her bucket list: She visited the Grand Canyon.

Brittany Maynard visited the national park with her family last week. Maynard, who has brain cancer, has said she plans to end her life Saturday, though she could still change her mind.

Maynard moved to Oregon from Northern California because Oregon allows terminally ill patients to end their lives with lethal medications prescribed by a doctor.

More than 750 people in Oregon used the law to die as of Dec. 31, 2013. The median age of the deceased was 71.

Maynard has become an advocate for a group that seeks to expand death-with-dignity laws around the nation.

"I don't want to die," Maynard told CBS News correspondent Jan Crawford earlier this month. "If anyone wants to hand me, like, a magical cure and save my life so that I can have children with my husband, you know, I will take them up on it."

She recently married and was hoping to start a family.

Now Maynard is planning her death, choosing to end her life before cancer can destroy her.

"I think until anyone has walked a mile in my shoes and knows what they're facing and has felt the -- like, just bone-splitting headaches that I get sometimes, or the seizures, or the inability to speak, or the moments where I'm looking at my husband's face and I can't think of his name."

Maynard found out this spring she has the most lethal form of brain cancer. Doctors told her she may only have six months to live.

Her medication has drastically changed her appearance, but she's decided to forgo aggressive treatment and die, as she puts it, with dignity.

Initially, it wasn't easy for her family to accept.

"I think it took my family a little while to realize that this is what made sense, because no one wants to hear that their daughter is going to die," Maynard explained. "No mother should have to lose a child. It goes against the grain of nature."

And to those who argue to hold on one more day, not to end her life before she has to, she said, "but my mother's not selfish enough to say, 'I want one more day where you're suffering.'"