Another Family Threatened for Disagreeing With Doctors
I saw a story in Blogging Baby over the weekend about another family threatened with loss of custody for attempting to stop treatments that were causing their child extreme distress. Like the cases of Katie Wernecke and Abraham Cherrix before her, the treatment 8-year-old Leah Beth Richards wanted stopped was radiation for cancer, in her case for Wilms tumor.
And like the Werneckes and the Cherrix's before them, the Richards' found that trying to honor their child's wishes earned them quick threats of legal action from hospital personnel.
According to a report in the Daily Mail, Kathryn Richards was moved by her daughter tearful pleas to stop the treatment, and felt that the little girl who had been such a fighter would not be asking lightly. So she called the hospital and asked to discontinue the radiation treatments with three left to go. She expected, she said, that the hospital would try to talk her out of it, or agree to a postponement. Instead, according to the report, she was told "If that's your attitude, we'll get Child Protection Services involved."
The parents did bring their child in, she received the treatments against her will, and she is now back in school. Since Leah Beth has already had the strongest and most severe treatments available, if she gets another tumor -- her fourth -- she will be medicated for pain and not much else. From a purely medical standpoint, it seems as though forcing the treatments was the right thing to do, but it came at the cost of a little girl's faith in her parents, and her parents' faith in her doctors.
Maybe none of that matters when a life is at stake; or maybe, once again, a situation that could have been handled amicably with a little time and compassion has been made more painful by bureaucratic heartlessness and medical ego. Do you think the hospital was right to force treatments on Leah Beth? Make your choice from the poll at right, and share your thoughts in the comments.
Comments
I personally think it’s awful to force someone to undergo a medical treatment they find truly distressing. It’s scary that children can be forced to do this. I don’t agree that life is always better at any cost. I think the person should have a say in whether they think life is better at any cost — especially here, where we’re talking about a treatment that is not guaranteed to produce a cure. Are we really “protecting” these kids — or condemming them?