Jebus said I was cured...

Linky

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The death of an 11-year-old girl, who sparked headlines after her family agreed to let her stop chemotherapy, is currently under investigation.

Makayla Sault, a member of the First Nations tribe in Canada, died after suffering a stroke on Sunday, Jan. 18. In a statement, the family blames the effects of 12 weeks of chemotherapy she had endured before she had stopped treatment, ABC News reported.

Makayla sparked national headlines last May after, at her request, she stopped chemotherapy treatment for her acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The family was soon investigated by a division of Canada's Children's Aid Society, which ultimately allowed the family to continue to care for Makayla without requiring the chemotherapy treatments.

In a video statement, Makayla explained why she asked her parents to stop chemotherapy in favor of "traditional" medicine.

Just plain fucked up, but remember, the CF are the evil ones.

I followed the case. They fought for the right to use "native" medicine instead than the ebil western chemo.
Then they went in an uberclinic in the US that does wheatgrass enema.

And of course the kid died. She has something like 85% chances of survival with chemo.

_______________________

“I was talking about children that have not been properly house-trained. Left to their own impulses and indulged by doting or careless parents almost all children are yahoos. Loud, selfish, cruel, unaffectionate, jealous, perpetually striving for attention, empty-headed, for ever prating or if words fail them simply bawling, their voices grown huge from daily practice: the very worst company in the world. But what I dislike even more than the natural child is the affected child, the hulking oaf of seven or eight that skips heavily about with her hands dangling in front of her -- a little squirrel or bunny-rabbit -- and prattling away in a baby's voice.”


― Patrick O'Brian, The Truelove


lib'-er-ty: the freedom given to you to make the wrong decision, based on the reasoned belief that you will normally make the right one.

I can understand not wanting to go through chemo. I did and it s*cked. I had blood clots in my legs, and was later hospitalized with pulmonary embolism. To my amateur opinion, the stroke she died from could have been caused by chemo. The blood clot in my lung may have traveled to the brain. I lost my girl dog from the same form of leukemia after four months of chemo. Makayla was only 11, but old enough to feel discomfort, and to force treatments on her would be mean.

I have never had chemo but have seen many friends AND my parents go through it. I am convinced that my parents both died from the effects of chemo...as my mother was cancer free when she died of pneumonia. Here immune system just never recovered after the treatments. Dont' know how much or if it has improved in the past 15 years but it was EBIL back then. My mother was the picture of health. She developed ovarian cancer. Had a hyst...and they got it all .. as it was just in the beginning stages. So then they shot her full of Chemo and radiation and she just went down hill until she would catch every bug that came anywhere near her. I already told my husband that I would NOT go through it. Just drug me up and I'd just live out my life. I have a friend who's mother was dx'd with breast cancer at 85. She opted not to have chemo. She also never had surgery. She is now..... 97 and still getting around with no effects.. and the tumor has actually shrunk. So.. I am really not a fan AT ALL of chemo. If it IS given then the diet, suppliments and mental attitude also needs to be addressed.
Okay... sorry to get kind of far off topic... but I can see where this family was coming from.

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barren4ever
I can understand not wanting to go through chemo. I did and it s*cked. I had blood clots in my legs, and was later hospitalized with pulmonary embolism. To my amateur opinion, the stroke she died from could have been caused by chemo. The blood clot in my lung may have traveled to the brain. I lost my girl dog from the same form of leukemia after four months of chemo. Makayla was only 11, but old enough to feel discomfort, and to force treatments on her would be mean.

You can't have a stroke as an effect of chemo months after you stopped it.

There is a very good commentary here.

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Yes, as happens so often in these cases, it’s not the quack’s fault that the child died. It’s the fault of those evil “Western” doctors and their poisonous chemotherapy. Always. Unfortunately, a stroke is a known complication of leukemias due to either cancer-related coagulopathy or complications of treatment. It’s one way that patients with end stage leukemia die. Given that Makayla hadn’t been treated in months, her stroke was almost certainly due to her cancer. Such strokes can be a hemorrhagic (for example, if the platelet count falls very low), or it can be a thrombotic stroke (clot) if the white blood cell count goes too high. Either way, it’s not particularly surprising that Makayla, with untreated leukemia, suffered a fatal stroke. It was almost certainly end stage cancer the killed her, not the side effects of the chemotherapy.

From another source::

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Still, with the addition of a targeted drug like Gleevac, 70% even of patients like her survive to five years, a virtual cure, said Dr. Victor Lewis, an oncologist at the Alberta Children’s Hospital who was not involved in the case.

From 70% to 0%? That is child abuse. At eleven you don't have the mental ability to make such a choice. She wasn't an adult.

Chemo is nasty, but dying from cancer is no walk in the park neither: chemotherapy vs death from cancer.

At least the poor kid has a relatively painless death.

_______________________

“I was talking about children that have not been properly house-trained. Left to their own impulses and indulged by doting or careless parents almost all children are yahoos. Loud, selfish, cruel, unaffectionate, jealous, perpetually striving for attention, empty-headed, for ever prating or if words fail them simply bawling, their voices grown huge from daily practice: the very worst company in the world. But what I dislike even more than the natural child is the affected child, the hulking oaf of seven or eight that skips heavily about with her hands dangling in front of her -- a little squirrel or bunny-rabbit -- and prattling away in a baby's voice.”


― Patrick O'Brian, The Truelove


lib'-er-ty: the freedom given to you to make the wrong decision, based on the reasoned belief that you will normally make the right one.

I think adults have the right to make medical decisions for themselves. With children it gets more complicated. I think the anti-vax movement is proof that parents cannot be trusted with the right decision on an issue that affects all society. There are also those abusive religious parents who refuse to get their children medical treatment.

Yet at the same time, I can see why a person might feel it is for the best to just let a sickly baby die rather than spend a short, painful life in the hospital, and I can also understand why a child with cancer might prefer to pass on treatment. It isn't just quantity of life that matters but also quality, and everyone values these things differently.

However, making a reasonable decision requires understanding the medical situation rather than reliance on unicorn farts and faries.

Yet another PNA.

Seriously. If you yank them from something that will probably work in favor of something that won't work... you're just wanting a PNA.

I can understand a feeling of not wanting to do EVERYTHING to save a person, as there is a line to be drawn. I've never done chemo (have seen two people go through it), but it's no surprise that it sucks, and I can understand not wanting to go through it. I fucking hear about it every week from my mother's idiot; he throws tantrums about not wanting to do chemo because it makes him feel like shit and prednisone tastes bad and one of his painkillers makes him constipated, etc. But then he bitches about how he wants to live. Well, to do one, you gotta do the other!

But in this case, when there's such a high survival rate with chemo, would it not be worth it? However, shit becomes a little murky from an ethical standpoint when the patient is a kid. Do you let them decide what to do with their own health? Or do you choose for them because they're kids and don't know what the fuck they need? I don't think eleven is old enough to make such a big decision for herself or to understand the depth of her situation. A kid that age would probably still stomp and whine if her birthday cake was the wrong color. But it's her life and she's the one who has to deal with the effects of the chemo, so should it be up to her to make the final call? Or should Mom and Dad have the authority to choose for her? I honestly don't know.

And what kid would say she'd rather do traditional medicine? That sounds less like kid talk and more like a kid coached by an adult. Maybe the parents didn't want to deal with the hassle of having such a sick kid and dragging her to appointments, so they'd just stuff her with ginkgo and Brazil nuts or some other random bullshit and say it's treatment. Maybe they couldn't afford treatment and decided to just let her die, or they disagreed with modern medicine because they're retarded. I can speculate all night, but in the end, it sounds to me like a kid that really did not have to die.