[95Tarheel]

I think that it has a very, very good chance of putting the finishing touch on a successful treatment. To me, from reading the blog, it looks like the girl is likely in remission now, and the radiation is the last step in the standard treatment for long term cure. (I think that the recurrance rates are higher if she doesn't get the radiation.) The overall cure rate is 70-90% for long term with children with Hodgkin's.

http://www.cancernews.com/articles/childhoodlymphomas.htm

What's weird is that the family is claiming that up front they were told that the treatment would be either chemo x2 + radiation if she responded well, OR chemo x4 if she didn't respond well. Well, she didn't respond well initially, and she apparently got chemo x4, and now the disagreement is about the radiation. It seems to me that if the cancer is advanced (stage 4, as in this case) and if it didn't respond as well as it could have (needed all 4 chemo cycles), that you would naturally want to be more agressive in trying to finish the cancer off. That's probably what the doctor's are thinking, anyway.

With children, the state will almost always side with the doctor if there is a disagreement about something this serious between the parents and the doctors. The fact that they tried to refuse her getting platelets and blood transfusions in the recent past makes the parents look very.... well, cavalier, about the life of their daughter.

For whatever reason, the family and their doctors are having and have had a lot of communication errors and/or disagreements for things to have gotten to this point.

Bottom line is that while there are some risks from radiation therapy, the doctors in this case must strongly feel that the potential benefits outweigh the risk. Alternatively the doctors just hate these people so much that they're creating a whole lot of work (and trouble) for themselves to give this additional treatment. (You can probably guess which one of these two that I think is the actual case! But to each his own.) I hope she gets better and stays better!

[TXBubba]

Thank you for doing the research on this. I've been dealing with kids at home. It is strange they just wouldn't do the final thing to get rid of the cancer. If that was the choice then I would certainly do it. Our radio talk shows were on this today. Not too many people happy that CPS took away ALL the kids in the family. Think they are being punitive with the parents because they have different views. Apparently there is no past history of any abuse or anything. Just government gone wild.