17 year old girl fights to stop lifesaving treatment

[J.Wilkins]

It should be noted that chemo has devastating and lifelong side effects and is basically torture to go through. People are right to be scared shitless to go through it. It takes a great deal of courage to go through it.

No, it doesn't have lifelong effects on most patients, it's temporary measure with a load of side effects but it's gotten a LOT better.

That parents convince their children not to take it because there is homeopathy that is better is a fucking disgrace.

Her option was, treatment or die... she didn't choose jack shit, her mother wanted her to die instead or was so fucking stupid that she thought that alternative treatments held up to the promises made.

You have one experience, other people who have recieved more modern targeted chemo for Hodgkins may have another and you still think that you know better...

I hope your kids never get any form of cancer but if they do, they should NEVER rely on you and their mothers advice, that much is fucking clear.

 

[J.Wilkins]

Yup, pretty much this. If you're going to be a moron, don't be a moron with your child's life.

Also, Ty Bollinger should be in prison, not only for this. For lots of things.

Ty Bollinger should be drawn and quartered in a perfect world... In this world, I'll settle for life in prison.

 

[bshole]

No, it doesn't have lifelong effects on most patients, it's temporary measure with a load of side effects but it's gotten a LOT better.

.

Tell that to my wife, she lost most of her hearing, has tinnitus and a severely compromised immune system. She nearly died last year from the flu. The hospital stay was over 50K. Each year her bouts with the flu have gotten worse. I get very nervous every winter.

The chemo/radiation was the single most horrible experience of our lives. It may be getting better for some people but it was an utter shit show for us.

Regrettably, it didn't help her. It was all done to save her tongue. It didn't work and they had to take her tongue anyways. So she has this lifelong damage to her body and got no benefit from the treatment.

 

[interchange]

I'm not sure actually. I would suspect it would take enough to understand some basic statistics. So, lets say average?

The part where she decided, despite the fact that the treatment is proven to be fairly effective, to not do the treatment.
Actions speak for themselves. She made a decision that leads people to think that she was not able to fully consider the options and choose the optimal choice.

Unless there is no other possible explanation for her choice other than stupidity, the choice itself lends no data to support your conclusion.

Maybe I'll ask a different question. Why is the case a national news story? It's about one person whose choices have no bearing on any other.

 

[J.Wilkins]

Tell that to my wife, she lost most of her hearing, has tinnitus and a severely compromised immune system. She nearly died last year from the flu. The hospital stay was over 50K. Each year her bouts with the flu have gotten worse. I get very nervous every winter.

The chemo/radiation was the single most horrible experience of our lives. It may be getting better for some people but it was an utter shit show for us.

Regrettably, it didn't help her. It was all done to save her tongue. It didn't work and they had to take her tongue anyways. So she has this lifelong damage to her body and got no benefit from the treatment.

Yes, and every single person will experience exactly the same trauma as your wife so no one should be treated for cancer...

You are applying something that does not fit. How about you ask a current cancer patient that has recieved newer targeted treatments if they would rather die?

I'm sorry about your wife, I truly am and given that I've seen my ex wife waste away in a preventable disease I might understand a bit more than you think on this matter. I do feel your pain, I really do but your wifes experience is nothing like modern treatment that is given for Hodgkin's so it's not applicable in the least.

The treatment is acute and won't leave lasting damage, the outlook is 96%+

I get you, I really, really do, towards the end the treatment was what killed my first wife but it still gave her an extra year and it was the best year we had together.

 

[SMOGZINN]

Unless there is no other possible explanation for her choice other than stupidity, the choice itself lends no data to support your conclusion.

Not really true. It is a data point, maybe not enough to make a strong statement of truth, but I don't have to rule out every other explanation to accept one as possible. Call it a theory. It explains the current data. If you want to debunk it come up with other explanations that fit the data better.

Maybe I'll ask a different question. Why is the case a national news story?

Because it is a part of a cultural conversation on our trust in medicine. Because it is a part of a cultural conversation on a person's right to make choices, even when the majority of the culture believes those choices are idiotic. Because we found it interesting enough to have spend the time to write 281+ posts about it.

It's about one person whose choices have no bearing on any other.

Surely you don't believe this. At the very least it influences your choice to write that sentence. Her decision was influenced by other's choices, like those that promote homeopathic medicine as a viable alternative, and will influence other's choices in the future. It is influencing our legal system that has to decide if a child should be allowed to die because of the belief of the parents.

Nothing we do is in isolation. No man is an island unto himself.

 

[J.Wilkins]

Not really true. It is a data point, maybe not enough to make a strong statement of truth, but I don't have to rule out every other explanation to accept one as possible. Call it a theory. It explains the current data. If you want to debunk it come up with other explanations that fit the data better.



Because it is a part of a cultural conversation on our trust in medicine. Because it is a part of a cultural conversation on a person's right to make choices, even when the majority of the culture believes those choices are idiotic. Because we found it interesting enough to have spend the time to write 281+ posts about it.



Surely you don't believe this. At the very least it influences your choice to write that sentence. Her decision was influenced by other's choices, like those that promote homeopathic medicine as a viable alternative, and will influence other's choices in the future. It is influencing our legal system that has to decide if a child should be allowed to die because of the belief of the parents.

Nothing we do is in isolation. No man is an island unto himself.

You don't realize this but without modern medicine there wouldn't be a single person alive on this earth today.

Without vaccines and antibiotics you'd have a negative population increase or rather, no one left alive.

The ideas you are supporting are authoritarian to some who believe them and they are legally allowed to murder people by providing them with water that won't do a damn thing as they die. These snake oil salesmen and charlatans must be dealt with because there are idiots out there who believe in them so much that they will let their children die.

If you don't see the problem in that then there is something severely wrong with your brain.

 

[Victorian Gray]

Tell that to my wife, she lost most of her hearing, has tinnitus and a severely compromised immune system. She nearly died last year from the flu. The hospital stay was over 50K. Each year her bouts with the flu have gotten worse. I get very nervous every winter.

The chemo/radiation was the single most horrible experience of our lives. It may be getting better for some people but it was an utter shit show for us.

Regrettably, it didn't help her. It was all done to save her tongue. It didn't work and they had to take her tongue anyways. So she has this lifelong damage to her body and got no benefit from the treatment.

Would you rather the cancer had killed her?

 

[woolfe9998]

Unless there is no other possible explanation for her choice other than stupidity, the choice itself lends no data to support your conclusion.

Maybe I'll ask a different question. Why is the case a national news story? It's about one person whose choices have no bearing on any other.

The explanation is more properly framed as irrationality rather than as stupidity. Isaac Newton may have been the smartest person who ever lived, but he believed in alchemy and other kinds of woo which were not backed by solid evidence. One can be perfectly book smart but make terrible decisions because of an inability to extract emotion from the process of reasoning. Case in point, with alternative medicines, they often sound appealing because "natural" just sounds best. A 17 year old lacks what I'd call intellectual maturity and this can cause irrational decisions. Then again, it's fair to point out that fully grown adults are probably only slightly more rational than 17 years olds on average. Evolution gave us the gift of intelligence but this gift is severely under-utilized.

 

[J.Wilkins]

Would you rather the cancer had killed her?

I kinda feel that everyone has been dying to ask him that from the first mention.

It's a horrid question and it should be directed to his wife rather than him. My wife chose not to live any more in the end, should I have forced her to live out her last days in pain?

I have a feeling that you want to be blunt but have no fucking clue on this matter and this question is ... if he would admit that he wished that she never had to go through it, if he'd do her will then perhaps... perhaps he's just a good guy wishing he could legally do good by his wife.

This is such a complicated issue that such a question can only be asked by a dying patient in hopes of understanding, not by some jackass trying to show someone as cold hearted on the internet.

 

[Victorian Gray]

I kinda feel that everyone has been dying to ask him that from the first mention.

It's a horrid question and it should be directed to his wife rather than him. My wife chose not to live any more in the end, should I have forced her to live out her last days in pain?

I have a feeling that you want to be blunt but have no fucking clue on this matter and this question is ... if he would admit that he wished that she never had to go through it, if he'd do her will then perhaps... perhaps he's just a good guy wishing he could legally do good by his wife.

This is such a complicated issue that such a question can only be asked by a dying patient in hopes of understanding, not by some jackass trying to show someone as cold hearted on the internet.

Survivor of stage 4 cancer here so if that last statement is directed at me (which it seems to be), fuck you. I have more than a few "fucking clues" thanks.

 

[bshole]

Would you rather the cancer had killed her?

I would rather they had taken her tongue and skipped the other shit. They did the other shit in an attempt to save her tongue. There is absolutely no doubt the chemo/radiation has shortened her life. It is a gamble whether she will survive each flu season.

This is not to blame Froedert Hospital. They are among the best in the WORLD for cancer care and they were doing it for a good reason.... to save her tongue. The treatment was never to save her life because the tongue removal would have done that. It was a minor surgery, then a minor surgery with radiation/chemo and then finally tongue removal. It lasted around three years. Living without a tongue is not a pleasant experience but she is a fighter. She has ten times the courage of myself.

 

[SMOGZINN]

You don't realize this but without modern medicine there wouldn't be a single person alive on this earth today.

Without vaccines and antibiotics you'd have a negative population increase or rather, no one left alive.

The ideas you are supporting are authoritarian to some who believe them and they are legally allowed to murder people by providing them with water that won't do a damn thing as they die. These snake oil salesmen and charlatans must be dealt with because there are idiots out there who believe in them so much that they will let their children die.

If you don't see the problem in that then there is something severely wrong with your brain.

I think you misunderstand me (or are quoting the wrong person?) I am firmly in the modem medicine camp. I personally believe that 'homeopathy' and any number of 'alternative' or 'holistic' medicines should be officially outlawed and their practitioners charged with fraud in the mildest cases, and manslaughter in the worst. I believe in vaccines, and have always gotten them as the CDC recommends, and believe that those promoting the 'anti-vaccer' movement need to be looked at and possibly prosecuted.

The problem I have, especially with the 'anti-vaccer' movement, is that from my person experiences with these people is that these are firmly and honestly held beliefs. They actually put the health and lives of their own children on the line for these beliefs. When protecting their children people will go to extremes. We have to be carful about outlawing just being wrong. Even what is to us tragically and obviously wrong.

This is probably one of the most important issues of our time. We have to find some way to balance the good of society against the freedom of people to make important choices for themselves and their family. In this fight education is a better tool than government force. I'm just not sure how to employ it effectively against the forces that we are fighting against.

 

[interchange]

The explanation is more properly framed as irrationality rather than as stupidity. Isaac Newton may have been the smartest person who ever lived, but he believed in alchemy and other kinds of woo which were not backed by solid evidence. One can be perfectly book smart but make terrible decisions because of an inability to extract emotion from the process of reasoning. Case in point, with alternative medicines, they often sound appealing because "natural" just sounds best. A 17 year old lacks what I'd call intellectual maturity and this can cause irrational decisions. Then again, it's fair to point out that fully grown adults are probably only slightly more rational than 17 years olds on average. Evolution gave us the gift of intelligence but this gift is severely under-utilized.

Agree with this and my basic point. Brilliant people are often irrational yet the common behavior is to automatically ascribe stupidity.

 

[interchange]

Not really true. It is a data point, maybe not enough to make a strong statement of truth, but I don't have to rule out every other explanation to accept one as possible. Call it a theory. It explains the current data. If you want to debunk it come up with other explanations that fit the data better.

You've generated a valid hypothesis, but that's all.

Because it is a part of a cultural conversation on our trust in medicine. Because it is a part of a cultural conversation on a person's right to make choices, even when the majority of the culture believes those choices are idiotic. Because we found it interesting enough to have spend the time to write 281+ posts about it.

Surely you don't believe this. At the very least it influences your choice to write that sentence. Her decision was influenced by other's choices, like those that promote homeopathic medicine as a viable alternative, and will influence other's choices in the future. It is influencing our legal system that has to decide if a child should be allowed to die because of the belief of the parents.

Nothing we do is in isolation. No man is an island unto himself.

I have to say that I agree with the implications. It was a set up pure and simple. Although there are some real implications here, none of them have anything to do with all of the discussion of her being an idiot for rejecting chemo. How much of these posts actually discuss any ethical, legal, or policy implications stemming from this case? How many have to do instead with judgments of her behavior?