I can see an adult refusing treatment if their cancer is advanced or the Doctors are giving a very low chance of survival. Why go through chemo and get that sick only to die in a few months anyhow? That’s a very personal end of life decision. One I hope that I never have to make.
They were predicting an 85% survival chance for this 17 year old girl. That’s pretty good odds if she gets the recommended treatment.
My cousin (she had ovarian cancer) had been told hers was caught very early. They said, She was lucky. Her body didn’t tolerate chemo well at all and they had to cut back on the toxicity. She was cancer free for a few years. Went back to work as a hospice nurse for about a year. She was a visiting nurse that saw patients throughout the rural county. She got C. diff (probably from a patient) and it was downhill from there. She was in and out of the hospital very, very sick. Then the cancer came back. They say ovarian is one of the more deadly cancers.
That’s what they told my daughter “Yeah,we can kill the Lymphoma” and they did.
What they didn’t tell her was the chemo would ,in a high percent of cases,cause Leukemia. That’s what killed her at 39.
I guess I just don’t care what they think. Every year I get older I feel like it’s disgusting that we don’t even have the right to die as we wish, a right we give to dogs and cats, for goodness’ sake. We work so hard to preserve every single life, and in the end, the arbiter of each life should be the one owning it. Yadda, yadda, suicidal people, I know. The only time I am willing to make an exception is if the person is a parent to minor children - then you MUST get help because those kids need you. Beyond that, I can’t condone forcing a teen to undergo chemotherapy.
Yep… kind of like a slow motion Darwin Award. I won’t grieve either.
And the notion that chemo is putting “poisons” in her body and therefore bad is just about the dumbest thing I’ve heard. Of course it’s poisons- how else are they going to kill the cancer cells?
We’re probably better off without this idiot. Too bad her mom will stay.
While I’m not sure that a 17 year old has the capacity to fully grasp what she’s doing, I’m also not comfortable with the state forcing chemotherapy on someone. So I think she should be given counseling and honest, complete medical advice. And then I think she should be allowed to choose her own path. And the news media should stay out of it’s none of our business.
In this case its a minor child - and if a parent is making a decision for a minor child, then I do care what they think. Because an adult choosing to die is their own business. But that isn’t what this is.