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The teen believes the chemotherapy will do more damage to her body than the cancer will.
Well no, probably not if the cancer is going to kill her if left untreated. Ignoring the fact that she is a legal minor I do think people should get to decide whether they want to live or die or go through the bother of treatment. If she doesn't feel her life is worth fighting for then who am I to insist she fight?
However, if she were my child I'd do everything within the law to make sure she got the best treatment available whether it was pleasant or not. I've seen people go through chemo without it being a horror story and without there being lifelong issues (at least not as long as their lives have been thus far). I think this is just the different thinking between the "ok let's get it done" people and the "there must be a kinder, gentler way" people.
This is a difficult one... but I think everyone should be able to choose what is given to them in hospital , although if it was my own child I wouldnt insist on treatment , but talk to doctors with the person to get the end result of chances of survival with chemo or other treatments...and what might be achieved without false promises.. if a good response from the doctor, then Id talk to this young person and maybe change their mind.... very difficult though.. I will say for myself as almost seventy... I dont think Id want chemo, but thankfully not in that position and saw my mother struggle for survival at the end and near eighty.. she wanted chemo to keep her going a wee while longer...regardless of the side effects.
The question I have not seen raised: Why were her parents wishes ignored in this matter?
They were supportive of her wishes.
But Americans are unaware that when signed up with FICA, children become wards of the state. That's why the court could rule against her and her parents.
The few cases where "religious beliefs" trumped the state also involved families who were nonparticipants in FICA.
It's not common knowledge, but when you delve into the background of these cases, they all appear after 1933, and the "State of Emergency."
Senate Report 93-549
War and Emergency Powers Acts
"A majority of the people of the United States have lived all of their lives under emergency rule. For 40 years (as of the report 1933-1973), freedoms and governmental procedures guaranteed by the Constitution have, in varying degrees, been abridged by laws brought into force by states of national emergency."
FREEDOMS ... ABRIDGED BY LAWS ... UNDER EMERGENCY RULE ...
Constitutional U.S.A. (1787 - 1933) R.I.P.
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.
Horrible.
Quote:
Originally Posted by suzy_q2010
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:
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.
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.
Thanks for your experience. It's nice to know there are effective treatments.
I remember my friend telling me his brother smoked marijuana in order to have an appetite to eat.
If I were the parent of course I would want her to go with the treatment.
The girl is seventeen which renders her short of her legal majority. Under the law, a minor does not have the right to determine what medical treatment they receive. Seventeen is close, but is not eighteen years of age when she could make this decision on her own.
If she were pregnant, would the law allow her to have an abortion solely based on her decision?
Similar? It concerns the same subject matter, and has been active. Apparently the OP on this one didn't see it. I, however, did and that's where my opinion is.
I also presume you know that minors don't enjoy all the rights that adults do under the law.
Oh that's right. We treat 17 year olds as proto-humans. Probationary people who might someday become fully-fledged people but for now whose feelings, reasoning, and decisions, even about themselves, are all invalid and of no consequence. Got it.
hopefully this 17 year old girl will survive til age 18, when she can get her own forms of medicine. hopefully she or someone who cares will research better treatment methods, more merciful and with much better rates of healing and remission than chemo and radiation. The conventional methods such as chemo and radiation are all too often what kills the patient, not the cancer itself, did you all know that? Naturopathic, special dietary, and other methods have demonstrated better rates of recovery from cancer, so I hope she finds out about them soon. She actually might need a different set of doctors, such as those in natural medicines, or those who specialize in wholistic cancer treatment with a really good recovery rate, that might be her first step. And get a good attorney who can argue that type of case successfully.
With treatment she has an 80% chance of survival iirc
Right. It doesn't say her stage, but assuming she is stage IV she has about an 80% survival rate based on 15 year old stats (and that's for ALL age groups, not younger people who tend to have a much higher survival rate). I suspect the survival rate is higher today with the new protocols and chemotherapies. If she was lower staged, the survival rate approaches 95%.
I am a stage IV Hodgkin's lymphoma survivor. Before I was diagnosed, I was a little bit like this family. I thought chemo was "poison." Clearly the pharmaceutical companies are out to get money. Yackity yack, yadda yadda - simply creating mythology about that which I did not understand.
Then, when my life was on the line, I did the research. Not a couple of blog posts from naturopaths - actually digging into medical journals, studies, getting 2nd and 3rd opinions, etc. Chemo is the only opinion to treat and cure Hodgkin's lymphoma. Not forcing her into chemo is akin to letting her kill herself. Going through it myself and taking charge of my own care really opened up my eyes to just how frightening and dangerous the world of alternative therapies are. I simply cannot understand the thought process someone goes through to forgo a treatment that CURES THE VAST MAJORITY OF PEOPLE WHO TAKE IT in lieu of alternative treatments that, well, there are only sketchy anecdotal stories of people coming out the other end in anything other than a box.
While I am admittedly uncomfortable with this legal concept that on your 18th birthday, a switch is flipped and suddenly you are a fully formed, rational adult (because obviously that is not true), I am OK with it in this instance because it will save her life. Unfortunately, there's not much we can do about brainwashed bozos after 18 other than let them die. That's unfortunate.
Yes, chemo is no picnic. But when I underwent the same chemo protocol as they are asking her to undertake at 23 when I was much sicker (as a result of 5 years of misdiagnosis because I was "too young" to get cancer) I still worked full time. I dated. Dated NEW people. While bald and after gaining 60 pounds on steroids. I had fun with my friends. I had many many more good days than bad. ABVD is every other week for a few hours - I did it every other Friday, was fine on Saturday, spent Sunday in bed, and then was back at work most Mondays. And, by the way, my litany of side effects were MUCH WORSE than average on this chemo regime.
Chemo impacts everyone differently, and yes, I do have some lifelong sideeffects as a result of my chemo. However, my life-long side effects are largely because I did it 100% by myself with no help or even visits from family. I probably shouldn't have worked full time. I should have had other people helping me cook, clean, and get through all the non-cancer parts of life. But I was still able to do it alone and I'm alive. I lived to see 25. I will probably live to see 30. Hopefully even 40, 50, 60, 70, or 80. None of that would have been possible if I had not gotten treatment.
80%+ survival rate vs 0% survival rate. I just have to wonder what on earth the mother is thinking here.
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