Been following this case with interest. As a health care provider, admittedly I have a different perspective on these teen cases than perhaps some do. At the beginning of my career, I worked with pediatric cancer and bone marrow transplant patients in an acute care hospital, so am familiar with these issues in the newly diagnosed, as well as those in chronic and ineffective treatments, and adolescent patients at the end of life in treatment.
I think the court did the right thing here. This is not a teen who has been undergoing painful and miserable treatments that are ultimately futile, and wants to stop. This is a very naïve and uneducated teen, newly diagnosed, and scared of the diagnosis, and the treatment.
At the risk of offending some, I will also respectfully suggest that the teen's mother, IMO, does not demonstrate from her comments that she is knowledgeable enough to allow her daughter to make a fatal decision to avoid treatment for this highly treatable cancer. The girl is under 18, so I am glad an assertive approach has been taken to save her life.
We as a society need to err on the side of keeping this teen alive, so that when she is an adult, she is free to make her own decisions. This is not an uncertain diagnosis, nor a particularly rare cancer. We know a lot about these cancers, and how they respond to treatments. She is not being forced to take an experimental treatment, but a treatment regimen that his an extremely high rate of cure. That, IMO, is what makes this "forcing" by the courts a very moral and ethical decision, IMO. For me, that makes all the difference-- the teen is
newly diagnosed, not in the end stages of illness.
Would the teen feel the same way if it was her mother with a new diagnosis of cancer, who wanted to refuse curative treatment? Perhaps so, perhaps not. Again, lots and lots of education and discussion are needed, with providers that can establish a rapport with both mom and teen.
Had the mom been the cancer patient and wanted to avoid treatment, I'd still be sorely disappointed and very disturbed at her choice, coming at the time of diagnosis, not the middle of a futile regimen, or at the end stages. I would would hope that all of the providers and the mom fully explore why she would want to refuse life saving treatments. This would include making sure she understands that complementary and alternative medicines and therapies often can be incorporated, and address her fears. If she still wanted to refuse after a lot of ongoing discussion, I'd honor that, making sure she understood she could change her mind any time, and make sure she had a mainstream medical provider to see her regularly as an outpatient so symptoms could be treated as they occur.
When I worked pedes years ago, I saw a handful of situations like these. We had leukemia and cancer patients whose families were Jehovah's Witness, and wanted to refuse blood products. The hospital went to court to get permission to treat, and easily received it (back in the 80's and 90's). In Minnesota not too long ago, a family of a 13 year old autistic boy wanted to avoid this same kind of curative treatment, and instead use herbs and complementary medicine. At one point, the teen and mother fled, just like this teen did. The court ordered the chemo, and the teen is alive today.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/31372774/...therapy-helping-boy-friend-says/#.VLAiiektH9k
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/05/19/minnesota.forced.chemo/index.html?_s=PM:US
http://www.lymphomainfo.net/blog/ge...-boy-with-hodgkins-finished-with-chemotherapy
Anyway, These are thorny decisions for all involved. I do think that teens and parents should be able to refuse chemo and life prolonging therapies, in the proper context of ongoing futile treatment. I don't think this is apporpriate at the beginning of a diagnosis where the treatment has such a high curative rate, and refusal is certain death. Those are the appropriate cases for the courts to step in, IMO, and err on the side of making decisions to attempt to treat the teen, and keep them alive so they can later make their own decisions as adults.
I hope this young lady responds to the treatments, and I also hope she is able to make come connections with docs and nurses there so that she can feel more secure that they have her best interests in staying alive in mind. I hope she can continue to learn about her body, her cancer, and the treatments for both the cancer and the side effects. I hope she and her mom will come to the realization that mainstream medical care and providers are not "the enemy." Mainstream medicine and complementary and alternative therapies are increasingly being used together to treat patients, and often family's CAM choices can be incorporated alongside mainstream therapies. (They do it in every single Chinese hospital, for example, due to centuries of reverence for traditional Chinese medicine.)
No one wants a beautiful 17 year old girl to die from an impulsive and uneducated decision. Refusal of this kind of care IMO means we need to have a lot more conversations with this family.
Always the voice of reason, and appreciate your experiences.