Reply to Wyoming mom of 5 who refused cancer treatment to have 6th child has passed away

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The chemo doesn't work, that's probably why.  Not much has changed in treating GBM in the last 15 yrs.  a lot of trials that don't do more than the standard crappy treatments.  You don't know how operable and location of the tumor(s).  If you've never seen what GBM does to someone, you have no idea what happens to the patient.  Your brain controls EVERYTHING so anything foreign up there causes issues.  Gbm cells double every 2 weeks and there's millions of cells that create a tumor.  It truly is a death sentence.  [/quote]

This is true. And the course of the illness is truly wretched - her quality of life for the 18 months or so she would've lived with it, even with treatment, would be very difficult.

This is the disease that the woman who fought for the right to end one's own life had - she moved out west so she could legally end her life instead of suffering through her remaining months with GBS.

It's such an awful disease - there needs to be more research and funding to find a cure, or an effective treatment. [/quote]

The point is, once she made the decision to keep the baby, she was morally obligated to also take the chemo, if it promised to help extend her life to keep the baby from being delivered prematurely.  There's a lot of research now indicating that chemo is OK outside of the 1st trimester.  I haven't seen any articles addressing this aspect.  [/quote]

What? No. She decided to try to keep going. She could have died earlier and baby too. Or later. She was entitled to keep the pregnancy and try any treatment or lack thereof she and her doctor felt best. [/quote]

Yes, legally entitled. Morally, I think she was obliged to take chemo to try to keep the baby from extreme prematurity. [/quote]
As explained in the article, the chemo would have killed the fetus. She had to choose: chemo or baby. Having both was not an option. You can't expose a fetus to drugs that cross the blood brain barrier, especially ones that are designed to kill fast growing cells.[/quote]

No, the article did NOT say chemo would have killed the fetus. The articles say she was barred from a clinical trial due to pregnancy. They say nothing at all about non-experiemental chemo.  Research now pretty convincingly shows chemo in the 2nd and 3rd trimesters is safe. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5044906/

Maybe there are other reasons she decline chemo -- we'll never know because the reporting on this story is so crappy.

It just pisses me off because these stories leave the impression that women must chose between chemo and abortion, which isn't true. [/quote]

Chemo is not effective for GBM. You really aren't getting this. Are you always like this?[/quote]

Argh. I KNOW that chemo for GBM does not  cure it, but it does extend life.  http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/283252-treatment

It's a perfectly reasonable and understandable choice to skip chemo for GBM, given the costs and benefits. But the calculus was different for this mother: she CHOSE to forgo the possibility of truly life-exending treatment (the experimental regimen) for the fetus,which would have had to be terminated. But then by also declining conventional chemo (for unclear reasons), she basically decided that the fetus wouldn't have any chance a healthy life.  She did not appear to truly prioritize the fetus.  She prioritized not having to have an abortion.  [/quote]

So? That's her choice. Plenty of people carry to term with fetuses they know will die from various trisomies or other issues. The point of having a choice is that they get to choose, whether that's to abort, carry to term, do your best to carry to term while knowing you or the baby may not make it, whatever. Just because you or I might have made a different choice doesn't give us any say in her choice.

And if the treatment is as awful as other PPs have described, I can understand skipping it, pregnant or not. You can't control every outcome. She could have died earlier or she could have held on longer, and either would have affected the baby differently. For that matter you don't know how treatment would have affected the baby. Give it a rest. Unless you're directly paying the family's medical costs, which I highly doubt, it's none of your business. [/quote]

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