A 16-year-old girl fighting urgent medical therapy for religious reasons was
"devastated" after doctors administered another treatment against her
will, her mother said yesterday.
The teenager, who can't be identified under provisions of the Child Welfare
Act, has been fighting to stop blood transfusions doctors prescribed as part of
her chemotherapy to treat acute blood cancer.
"A second blood transfusion has been imposed on my daughter. She is
devastated," her mother said in a press release issued by her lawyer
yesterday.
The girl, a Jehovah's Witness like her parents, believes the treatments are
against God's will and, along with her mother, has taken the fight to court.
Justice John Rooke last week denied the teen's request to temporarily stop transfusions
for her leukemia treatment until she can appeal an earlier decision making her
a ward of the province and putting the medical decisions in the government's
hands.
The struggle has divided her parents over whether she should get blood
transfusions to treat her leukemia.
She received her first blood transfusion last week, followed by another that
her father credits with saving her life.
The transfusion came just days after he changed his own mind on the religious
repercussions of the procedure.
"She is being given a sedative so that she cannot fight the
transfusion," her mother charged yesterday.
"Her doctors also give her a drug that suppresses her memory so that she
cannot remember the trauma of having treatment forced on her."
Communicating only through a lawyer, her mother maintains it should be up to
her daughter what treatment she receives.
"She continues to ask that her own choice of a modified chemotherapy
regime without blood transfusions be respected.
"She wants to live without the horror of forced treatment imposed against
her wishes and designed to crush her will to resist.
"It is her body and her life. Her choice should be respected."
The girl was admitted to Alberta Children's Hospital Feb. 13 with flu-like
symptoms and was diagnosed later that day with leukemia.
Chemotherapy with blood transfusions is the only known successful treatment for
acute myeloid leukemia -- and its success rate is 40% to 65%.
Doctors say without the treatment, the girl will die.