:rolleyes: :rolleyes: oh, boy. What kind of nonsense was she taught growing up?
This has been in the news for three months. Her mom and her both originally tried to refuse treatment. The girl ran away. It’s a mess trying to save this precious snowflake’s life.
Ironically she’s got an 85% chance of survival with chemo. The treatment delays in the past couple months couldn’t have helped.
This kind of medicine is voodoo nonsense comes straight from the parent. I can only imagine the bs she’s been taught. Once she’s 18 she can refuse treatment and kill herself. I hope by her next birthday she’s reconsidered.
I watched a close relative battle ovarian cancer with great bravery. She went into remission and had three good years. She was unlucky and it returned to take her life. Ovarian cancer is one of the really bad ones. It often returns. Other cancers respond much better and patients get decades of additional life. This girl is 17, she might live another 50 years with proper treatment.
There’s something to debate? This isn’t new. I’ve seen similar cases in other states in the past few years. The courts have consistently supported the hospital’s position to require treatment to save a minor’s life.
She can go off and kill herself after she turns 18.
I’ll defer to the GD thread, but it’s worth making the separate comment here that the choice seems to be having icky metastasizing killer cells in your body instead of “toxic harmful drugs.”
And yes, chemo* is *toxic drugs - that’s its whole approach, to poison and kill the tenacious invader cells one step ahead of killing the host.
I guess cancer cells are “pure and natural” and thus preferable.
I think it’s unfair to characterize the girl’s objections this way (or to attribute minimizing words to her such as “icky”). As far as I know, she wanted to seek a second opinion, which she had the right to do (if not by statute). There is indeed great damage done and many long-term side effects by way of chemotherapy. It’s nonsensical to declare that she’s too immature and must be physically forced to do something she hasn’t consented to because she hasn’t “turned” 18 yet, but will notably be out of their grasp within a matter of months.
I came down hard because of her past behavior. I can understand questioning treat. Getting a second opinion is a very wise choice. That’s something done early after diagnoses. Since then she’s run off and been retrieved. Dragged this out in a senseless court battle that foolishly delays treatment.
She may not get optimum results now. Three precious months has been wasted. Every day counts with cancer.
I wonder how many treatments she needed? Don’t they typically give three or four chemo treatments over a period of months? I know these days its been speeded up. They’ve improved treatment a lot in the past decade.
The Today Show host had treatment last year. She was back on air in six months.
Chemo’s a pretty nasty procedure, I think there’s more here than just putting her down for not wanting it and calling it icky to mock her age (nothing in the linked article says she ever called it “icky”).
Further, this isn’t like some little kid worried her class will laugh if she loses her hair, she’s 17, what about a particular day in less than a year makes her decision suddenly acceptable?
I don’t think she should refuse, I don’t even necessarily think she should be allowed to refuse, but I also don’t think the amount of mocking vitriol in this topic is warranted either.
Rational people turn down chemo every day. I haven’t cared enough to read whether her motives are rational or silly. Ultimately she’s mostly in charge of her body, and the *mostly *caveat is only due to age. The hospital certainly doesn’t (and shouldn’t) have a dog in this fight.
I heard a story about this on NPR. The girl’s mom, in an interview, said something like, “They’re saying she’s going to die if she doesn’t get chemo. She’s not going to die. This is about putting poisons in her body.”
She’s not going to die.
In the face of that blatant misinformation handed to the girl by such a trusted authority figure, I am sympathetic to forcing chemo, sorting out the trauma of it later. At least she’ll be alive to experience the trauma. Then she can come to learn the truth about what her mom told her.
The amount of inaccurate medical information being propagated today is appalling and dangerous. Cancer treatments and chemo have steadily improved. Chemo’s side effects are much better managed and long term recovery rates for many cancers are quite good.
Cancer treatment will always be a very difficult process for any patient. It’s not something anyone wants to experience. But given the choice of dying or perhaps living a full life its the only practical choice.
Foolish adult people have the right to make foolish decisions. Unless it endangers others. (like driving 90mph down a city street) Under current law minors can be required to get necessary medical treatment to save their life. I’d hope going to court is a last resort. Counseling and solid medical advice from family can often persuade people to accept treatment. No one wants to see a 17 year old needlessly die.
Speaking of appalling medical woo. Here’s another example. Anyone doubt she got her information from the internet?
This is a case where public safety is a concern. She’s got 7 foster kids in her care. We’re in a bad flu season and this is the kind of woo the CDC is up against.
Any of Y’all had cancer/chemo?
I have.
My tears were so caustic they blistered my eyelids and left tracks of red skin down my face. Urine? I don’t want to talk about that. Cracked finger tips.Huge hangnails on every nail that bled. Tremors … Neuropothy has lingered for 7 years. Changes in the taste and smell of everything. Changes in my mind.
Will I go through it again?? Got serous doubts that I will.
I also agree with the poster who said her decision is “evolution in action”.
So I don’t know where that puts me.
From what I’ve read it sounds as if she has a decent chance to beat this if she gets the chemo. But having seen what chemo can do to a human body, I don’t blame her for being afraid.
She’s almost to the age where she can legally refuse. I say let her make up her mind for herself.
Don’t mock her, mock her mother, if you must mock someone.
Haven’t, but I’ve seen it, and I don’t know if I’d go through it. I might say (and I know I wouldn’t know until it happened) “I’d rather have lived the live I had and die from this than go through chemo, which will have incredible short term impact on my quality of life, and have significant long term impact on my quality of life.” And I completely respect that choice. Its brave. Its informed. To me, its understandable.
(I’m pretty darn sure that if I were facing stage IV cancer, they wouldn’t get a chemo needle near me - at that point you are prolonging the quantity of life - but usually not by much - and usually making huge trades in the quality - stage II with a fairly high cure rate - like a lot of breast cancers, I’m pretty sure I’d be in the chair watching poison drip into me - for the chance at 20 or 30 more years. But it depends on the toxicity of the treatment, too - some regimens and much less life impacting than others)
However, it doesn’t sound like these people (the girl or her mother) are making that choice, they sound like they may be making the “we don’t trust the medical establishment, and through beet juice (the power or prayer, crystal healing, chiropractors, ignoring it until it goes away, pick your woo poison) she will live.” That one I have less respect for. But who knows what they really think.
Are you sure you’re not confusing chemo with radio? Nowadays depending on the case there are chemos which aren’t much worse than my mother’s stomach pills. My grandfather’s and my uncle’s chemos weren’t particularly bad, my father and my aunt’s left/leave them feeling wrung out.
In my father’s and my aunt’s cases, the changes in taste and smell were/are due to quitting smoking. The rest definitely doesn’t describe their cases. They had/have the same cancer, 15 years apart.
Completely depends on the drugs and the patients reaction - it can be anything from “not a huge deal” to your tears burning and having poop the feels radioactive coming out of your ass.
And depends on the radiation - radiation has been less of a deal than chemo for most of the people I’ve watched go through it.
A coworker had a baby with cancer and nuclear diaper rash is a pretty accurate description. That baby is now fourteen, and can’t play sports due to brittle bones, has delayed puberty (and may never reach it - they aren’t sure, but there is a chance she hit menopause when she was eighteen months old) - but she’s alive.
As far as I know, she wanted to seek a second opinion, which she had the right to do (if not by statute). There is indeed great damage done and many long-term side effects by way of chemotherapy. It’s nonsensical to declare that she’s too immature and must be physically forced to do something she hasn’t consented to because she hasn’t “turned” 18 yet, but will notably be out of their grasp within a matter of months.