Assisted suicide is a touchy subject and it’s hard to be fully on one side or the other of the debate.

But if you aren’t sure where you fall, I encourage you to pick the patient’s side.

Put yourself in the patient’s shoes. Sit in his or her bed just for a moment.

Imagine being told one day that you have cancer. It’s not looking good, but you want to fight it. You attempt to maintain a healthy lifestyle as you begin chemotherapy.

First, you have to decide which route to take and the options aren’t pretty. One may cause liver damage and the other could cause infertility.

You always feel sick. You’re up all night in pain, throwing up and unable to keep food down. You are losing your hair. Your loved ones wear their broken hearts on their sleeves and you pretend not to see it.

Your twenties are supposed to be the best years of your life and you’re spending them in the hospital. Bartenders and baristas don’t know you, but nurses and doctors do.

You lie in the same bed for months waiting for the energy and the courage to get up.Imagine fighting through that every single day with the possibility in the back of your mind that you may die anyway.

Imagine wanting all the mental and physical pain to just go away, but there is only one way out.

That’s how 29-year-old Brittany Maynard felt when brain cancer threatened to cut her life short. Maynard wanted to fight it.

She endured extensive brain surgery only for her tumor to return months later. She had six months to live.

Maynard wanted to take matters into her own hands and die by her own terms. Not by the cancer that already ripped everything else from her.

Maynard moved from her native California to Oregon where she could legally end her life. A move that must have been difficult just so she could “die with dignity” in a place she had never been.

She died on Nov. 1, 2014 after taking a fatal dose of medication, surrounded by her husband and loved ones.

Oregon is one of only five states with death-with-dignity laws, meaning that assisted suicide is legal to a certain extent. It’s a process that can take weeks.

According to deathwithdignity.org, the patient must be a legal resident of the state where assisted suicide is offered.

The patient must be 18 years old, cleared as mentally competent and diagnosed with a terminal illness that will lead in death within six months.

Two doctors must determine if the criteria has been met. Then there are oral requests, written requests, witnesses who must sign off on it and drugs must be ordered.

One big thing I don’t agree with is that the illness must lead to death within six months.

What if no one knows when or if cancer may take a person’s life, but the patient wants to die anyway?

Think about the damage a cancer patient could carry forever. Someone could battle with cancer for the rest of their lives, but always survive.

Why put them through that just because “natural” death isn’t on the horizon?

If a patient wants to die, let them. Who are we to keep someone walking on a tight rope in a life they don’t want?

Is this really any different than pulling the plug of life support on an elderly loved one or someone who may never wake from a coma?

This next part may sound hypocritical because this is where I fall on both sides of the debate.

Raise the age limit.

An 18-year-old is a child with a brain that is still developing. A brain that needs more time to think about how serious this is.

A child doesn’t need this option on his or her plate along with everything else they have to go through.

I’ve visited St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital where they treat children of all ages. I couldn’t imagine any child I saw in that hospital, whether 15 or 19, presented with assisted suicide.

If anything should have a 21-year age limit it should be assisted suicide, not drinking.

Many people are against it for religious reasons and that’s fine. But religious reasons need to be kept out of the laws that govern all types of people.

After all, the idea that cancer is a battle to be fought is a western ideology. Yet, for others, it could be a moral thing or they may just not be comfortable with it, which is also fine. But the patient’s comfort should come first.

In regards to a second assisted suicide bill, Nicola Sturgeon, first minister of Scotland, said recently that we should support people’s right to live. But shouldn’t we also support people’s right not to?

Maybe in time people will become more comfortable with it and patients will feel more at ease about their decision.

It’s not selfish to want to end ones own suffering.