Owlish Mutterings

Katie Wernecke

If the name doesn't strike a bell, she's a 13 year old Hodgkin's lymphoma patient in Houston, who went through chemotherapy but her family didn't want her to have followup radiation therapy. Houston Chronicle article here.

She was in CPS custody for a while, not getting court ordered treatment. Now she's apparently being returned to her family, but ordered to go through with treatment. Doesn't make sense to me, but whatever. The docs estimate her chances of surviving as going from 80-85% if she had gotten radiation therapy as recommended, to 20-25% now, if she goes through with it.

The dad wants to do IV Vitamin C therapy. Which to me sounds as useful as oral chocolate therapy.

I had previously writen about the case here. I still don't know what the doctors told the family originally, but it wouldn't surprise me if combination therapy was what was recommended in the beginning.

At this point, it looks like the child will die, because of decisions made by her family. The libertarian in me says "ok, that was their choice, now live with it." The doctor says things not appropriate for polite company.

Update: She's being returned to her family, with no restrictions.