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Does the government have the right to force any of us to undergo Chemo? The answer is an easy NO. Any other arguments for or against are pointless.
I presume you are older than 18? I also presume you know that minors don't enjoy all the rights that adults do under the law. This renders your whole reply "pointless".
I would have thought the side effects could be treated, but I still read of how horribly people suffered from them.
Do most chemo patients not take these treatments, or is the side effect so powerful that it doesn't do much?
I'm just curious.
When my son first started his chemo, vomiting was pretty much inevitable. We had a drive of over an hour from where he was treated (Egleston, in Atlanta) to our home, and we kept the disposable emesis basins in the car. (One of the other kids being treated at the same time as DS dubbed one of those the just-in-case because her mom told her they would keep one available just in case it was needed.) After an anti-nausea drug called Zofran came out, the just-in-case was pretty much unnecessary. He went from puking on the way home to stopping at his favorite junk food restaurant. Kids on chemo get to eat junk food - pretty much anything they want to eat.
Hair loss? Yes. He opted for a wig rather than shaved head and a hat like many boys on chemo. I bought the wig, the lady who usually cut his hair styled it to look like his usual haircut, and he wore it until his real hair needed to be cut. That was funny, because I kept thinking one day he would get up and not put the wig on, but he kept wearing it. I had to point out he did not need it any more. Kids at school who did not know him well did not even know it was a wig, though the first day he did not wear it someone asked him if he had colored his hair - the wig was not a perfect color match.
Other side effects depend on the drugs used, but not every patient has every side effect and, yes, most can be dealt with. The biggest thing is to be aware that they almost always go away after the treatment is over.
Edited to add:
Quote:
Originally Posted by BunnyBinkies
Watching someone go through it is a whole lot less painful than going through it. Especially being FORCED to go through it against your will.
Whether it's the medical industry or the courts forcing this on her, it's wrong. It should be no one's decision but hers.
She is still a child. She has demonstrated she does not have the maturity to make that decision for herself. Any child would rather not have chemo. If her mother had a backbone, told her she would be there for her, and supported the treatment, it likely would have never gotten to the courts. Her mother needs to be a parent, not a wimpy friend.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BunnyBinkies
I had one friend who was given the nausea meds but they didn't help. Almost everything she ate she puked right back up again. Eventually the chemo rotted her gut so much that she had to have part of her colon removed. It wasn't because the cancer had spread to her colon, it was a side effect of the chemo.
She spent months suffering the side effects of chemo & radiation & ended up dying of cancer anyway.
Was your friend a 17 year old with Hodgkin's disease? Or did she have a poor prognosis cancer to begin with? All I can tell you is that the nausea meds worked great for my kid, and there is no reason to believe they will not work for Cassandra.
Last edited by suzy_q2010; 01-09-2015 at 11:03 PM..
there is a lot of our law that has to deal with a minor's rights and/or restrictions until they are legally an adult.
Age is arbitrary, for sure, but a 17 year old girl still has to have her parent's permission to marry, and parents of minors who are in effect fully young adults still have the legal responsibility for them until they turn 18.
A 17 year old boy who is 1 month away from turing 18 still can't enlist in the military on his own.
Just a few examples of how the law is. For every instance we don't like about a minor's legal status, there is another one we approve of.
All I can say is if it was my child, I would follow what the experts have to say about medical treatment, not my child's thoughts. Chemotherapy is poison, true enough, but it's sophisticated poison, that, when properly administered, can save lives. With an 80% success rate, that's a lot better odds than any other treatments, I'll bet, and I would want my child to live longer than a year or two at that young age.
Sure, the chemo does take a heavy toll, and it must have lingering side effects, but if one of the side effects is a good 20 years of life, I think that though the price is high, it's worth the cost. it all depends on the quality of life vs. a short life, but any cancer is going to rob all of life's quality before it's done with it's vile work.
I would sooner see some damage than massive damage that cannot be reversed because it's too late to reverse. I doubt any 17-year-old can think in those terms; at that age, all kids think they are immortal. That is nature's way.
I would sooner see some damage than massive damage that cannot be reversed because it's too late to reverse. I doubt any 17-year-old can think in those terms; at that age, all kids think they are immortal. That is nature's way.
I think they should force her to go along with it. It has an 85% success rate. It is very likely to be successful at her age. If it was a boy with testicular cancer and he just decided to die instead of get the bad nut cut out and chemo, people would think he was a moron and his parents morons for going along with such a decision. It would definitely be against the hippocratic oath for a physician to let her opt out of treatment and it is probably illegal under some sort of child endangerment law.
If I felt it came from some reasoned or deep held belief I would be all for it. After seeing an interview with her mom whining about them starting chemo and saying she now had poison in her body, I'm reluctant to let her. Her mom's a dope, and her trust in her will cost her her life simply because her mom's too stupid or emotional to think rationally about this.
If this girl has read all about the treatments and looked up the stats about recurrence and survival rates and made an informed decision, I think she has every right to turn down the treatment being forced upon her.
It is hard call some people refuse medical treatment for what ever the reason. Forcing some one for treatment is not right but at same time it is curable.
If some one got shot or stabbed and had good chance should they be allowed to refuse medical treatment.
Even if a doctor got shot and had problem and it was curable does even he have right to refuse medical treatment.
That right ends when they make a decision that would kill or inflict grave harm on their child. At that point, the courts can step in and the judge can appoint a guardian to make the treatment decisions. This kind of thing has been necessitated by nuts who think they should deny their children blood transfusions or a simple course of antibiotics for pneumonia. I don't like it either, but some people just are not fit parents and sometimes otherwise fit parents fail to make reasonable medical treatment choices for their children.
I say, even in such cases, the parent SHOULD still have the right. Their parental sovereignty, to me, should be that absolute. Anything else means we're nothing less than North Korea or the former USSR. Any judge who would rule as this one did deserves to be thrown out of office and not even allowed to vote, because we don't need a bunch of communists taking over this country (if they haven't already).
Understand--I get it that you have parents who make silly decisions that are, in fact, reckless, and we want to prevent that. However, in making it to where we can intervene in those cases, we now can also intervene in other cases like this one where parental sovereignty should be respected. If it comes down to being able to intervene in "nutcase" situations, versus not being able to intervene in any, I would rather #2 be the one that is the case. As wrong as it is for nutcase parents to be able to not treat children who need it, I think it is WORSE to force someone to do something against their will and override the parents sovereignty in it.
I say this as someone who has a HUGE amount of respect for personal sovereignty in other areas as well. I don't think anyone should be able to be involuntarily institutionalized for being a danger to themselves only. I don't think an elderly person should be forced into a nursing home if they would rather die at home instead. A person should be able to make decisions about their situation no matter how foolish that decision is. Period. In this case, the 17 year old is a minor so that's the mother's prerogative, period. To butt into that is to say that all parental authority is invalid and can be stripped away for any reason at any time, and last time I checked, this isn't the former USSR or North Korea.
Chemo saves lives. It's not always horrible. I had chemo for 6 months, 12 years ago. It was not like one of those horror stories. I didn't throwup, didn't loose my hair, was not bedridden, didn't look sick. I didn't suffer organ damage. I won't say it was pleasant but I have had flu that was as bad or worse. Today I'm as healthy as if the cancer never happened. When one receives a cancer diagnosis, it's time to toughen up and fight. I hope the girl gets the treatment she needs.
Wow that's a really tough call with valid arguments for both sides. The fact that she's only 17 and has very little life experience makes it an easier call for me to lean towards her taking the chemo. Her judgment may be clouded by magical thinking as is often the case with teenagers. She may have this great fantasy that an alternative treatment may magically cure her but the gritty reality is probably not. Look at Steve Jobs. One size does not fit all and she may very well just sail through it and go on to live a long life. I'm hoping she looks back on it in her 30's and was grateful to be given a second chance at life. Time will tell.
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