Cassandra Callender, forced to undergo chemo, dies at 22

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By PAT EATON-ROBB

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Cassandra Callender, who was forced by Connecticut courts as a teenager to undergo chemotherapy for cancer, has died after a five-year battle with the disease, her mother said Thursday. She was 22.

Callender, of Windsor Locks, died Tuesday at home, where she had been in hospice care for four months, Jackie Fortin said.

“The cancer never went away,” Fortin said. “They said they saved her life. They lied. She suffered for five years. It was horrific. If you did that to your dog, you’d get arrested.”

A judge in 2015 ordered Callender, known as “Cassandra C.” during her legal fight, to undergo chemotherapy for Hodgkin’s lymphoma after she refused treatment, saying she didn’t want to poison her body.



FILE - In this April 27, 2015 file photo, Cassandra Callender, arrives home with her mother in Windsor Locks, Conn., for the first time since December after a court-ordered chemotherapy for cancer treatment. Callender has died after a five-year battle with the disease, her mother said Thursday, May 14. She was 22. (Stephen Dunn/Hartford Courant via AP)


Read more: https://apnews.com/a1412f9dd25085a9ed1e653954109715

[Jamastiene]

1. RIP

[msongs]

2. ungrateful for the extra time she got? ok nt

[brooklynite]

3. Do you know what the quality of that extra time was?

[LisaL]

21. When she became an adult, she agreed to continue with treatments.

So I don't think "forced" really applies here, does it?
"At that point an adult and able to make her own decisions, Callender eventually agreed to more chemo, immunotherapy and other treatments, but the cancer spread, Fortin said."
https://apnews.com/a1412f9dd25085a9ed1e653954109715

[Miguelito Loveless]

4. If the "extra time" you get

is five years of misery, pain, and watching you body disintegrate, what is there to be grateful for?

Seriously, check out the side-effects of chemo. I've watched people go through it, and it isn't a pleasant process.

https://www.cancer.org/cancer/hodgkin-lymphoma/treating/chemotherapy.html

[LisaL]

22. She became an adult, and agreed to more conventional treatments.

So we can argue about side effects of chemo, misery and pain-obviously she wanted to live.
She could have refused treatment as an adult.

[Miguelito Loveless]

28. Certainly

But the assumption was that she was "ungrateful" and her life was somehow better is an unsupportable assumption.

[LisaL]

42. She went in remission after being treated as a teen.

But the cancer returned. After which she tried alternative treatments for a year, which obviously did no good. Then she tried conventional treatments again, but presumably but that time it was too late. But clearly she figured out that alternative treatments weren't going to cure her. Perhaps without all the delays in getting conventional treatments, the outcome could have been different.

[Rebl2]

30. So sorry to hear of her passing. I remember hearing her story.

True chemo is miserable. She did become an adult in that time though and was allowed to make her own decisions and she chose to keep up the chemo.
I have rheumatoid arthritis and have taken a chemo drug called methotrexate since 1985. (Yes it is a treatment for RA.) When I took a smaller dose it wasn’t to bad. In more recent years I have had to take a much higher dose and I can count on feeling sick for a couple of days. The dose is nothing like someone with cancer takes, but I feel for them and am unsure I would agree to it at my age.

[avebury]

7. A person has a right to make their own medical decisions.

Quality of life matters. If you are old enough to understand what is going on and the consequences of each option available to you, it is your right to make that decision. What they did amounts to false imprisonment if they held her against her will, bodily assault. If she was a minor at the time, some states might have viewed it as interfering with the custody of a minor. I could see a civil suit against the hospital and doctors. I can picture one hell of a summation to a court case to put it in terms that any juror could see a type of situation that could impact him/her or a family member.

[spooky3]

13. I think so too. Nt

[Jirel]

16. There is no basis for a law suit.

That order lasted less than 1 year, until she could legally make her own choices. Once she reached age 18, HER choice was to continue chemo and other treatment. There is absolutely no reason to sue her doctors.

[LisaL]

23. Exactly. She continued with the treatments.

[treestar]

32. It was the courts that ordered it

So why should the doctors be sued? Was the court decision appealed? That's the only way to fight that.

[Journeyman]

8. If I may, a useful book for you might be "On Being Mortal," by Atul Gawande . . .

It is a learned, highly informative take on the whole "business" of dying. In particular, he examines with great insight the relative merits of treatment for prolongation of life vs the decision to embrace a quality of being in our final moments.

[jimfields33]

9. I thought that too.

[LanternWaste]

11. What specifically leads you to believe she was ungrateful?

[LanternWaste]

10. Pretending knowledge you lack? ok nt

[LizBeth]

12. This.

[Warpy]

27. That extra time was miserable

Chemo can eliminate cancer cells, but there are always aftereffects and some of those can be horrific.

Medicine isn't magic and cures often come at a cost, and she didn't even get a cure, just a delay of the inevitable during which she was never really well. Some people are fine with that if they have life milestones to achieve. She wasn't and her wishes should have been considered.

[NotHardly]

31. What sort of POD statement is this? Dising of a dead girl? You got some no class there baby

[avebury]

5. I have mixed feelings about what the courts did to her.

Hodgkins, if caught early, has a good chance of recovery. One of my cousins was diagnosed with Hodgkins his first year of college, about 37 years ago and he recovered and has a very good life.

However, a person should have the right of self determination when it comes to medical decisions. We don't know at what stage her disease was when she was forced to undergo treatment. If she did, in fact, suffer for the last five years it would have been interesting to see if the family could have filed any type of legal case against the hospital and doctors.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

6. I think as a minor (17) she did not have the right. Were her parents dogmatic?

Perhaps the courts found her parents were incompetent or were biased because of unscientific beliefs. Any light on that?

[stopdiggin]

18. right. she would have been able to direct her own

medical treatment following 18th birthday (I think). After that .. she went "alternative medicine" for a while .. relapsed several times .. returned to conventional treatment .. had twins ..
(mother is a nut case .. and I say that with full prejudice .. daughter might have been too)

[deurbano]

20. If she had started immediately with the conventional treatment and returned to it more quickly...

maybe the outcome could have been different. Even after the first (forced) round proved unsuccessful, she eventually (but perhaps with too much of a delay) turned to it again (voluntarily), so the mother's position seems divorced from reality. Also, when my daughter was diagnosed (as an adult) with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma with about the same odds of survival, we did every thing we could to expedite treatment because every moment counted. (She has been in remission since Feb, 2014.) I can't imagine a parent taking such a contrarian stance with so much at stake.

i wonder if Cassandra banked eggs before the first rounds of chemo? Twins could indicate IVF. RIP, to Cassandra after such a difficult times, and all best wishes for her children.

[stopdiggin]

24. there were some (unusual) beliefs and attitudes

present throughout. (that is why the hospital and courts were involved in the first place) And that's all the farther I want to take it. Sorry for (everyone's) loss.

[LisaL]

25. Who would do an IVF on a woman with cancer?

[StevieM]

34. Congratulations to your daughter on 6 1/4 years of remission.

I am especially pleased that she has crossed the 5 year threshold.

[deurbano]

36. Thanks so much! With her particular type of lymphoma, a recurrence after even two years

is very rare, and we feel quite blessed. My daughter is quadriplegic, and that made the chemo particularly grueling for her (she "deconditioned" very rapidly, and ended up spending five months in the hospital after checking in for what was supposed to be just five days for the first round of chemo), but as horrible as that was, she was soon(ish) able to return to her very busy, productive (and political!) life... although at the moment, that mainly involves a lot of Zoom meetings! At any rate, during the dark days in the hospital and the subsequent recovery at home, it was hard to imagine such a positive future. (Current administration and global pandemic, notwithstanding.)

[Jirel]

15. The choice was completely hers for the past 4 years.

The order went until age 18. Between age 18 and 22, SHE was calling the shots. It says so right in the article. SHE made the decision to undergo treatment.

[Jirel]

14. Calling BS.

Note that she was ordered into treatment at age 17. That means she could've stopped in 1 year or less when she turned 18. But SHE chose not to. SHE found out that she had another mass, and SHE chose chemo and other treatments. SHE controlled her treatment between age 18 and 22, 4 years.

This is just another moment for her negligent mother to get on her soapbox about her own biases against medicine. So screw you, mommy dearest. Maybe you didn't succeed in killing your daughter, but all her choices about treatment and how that impacted her quality of life were HER OWN, not yours, for the next 4 years. Quit whining to the press about it.

[Glimmer of Hope]

17. I have been on various chemos for five years and

I have been able to manage most of the side effects. This makes me sad.

[iluvtennis]

19. Rest In Paradise Cassandra Callender.

[marble falls]

26. We can drag her through hell but we can't make someone else wear a mask. How does that even work?

[OneBro]

29. Sad all around.

A 17-year old can join the military with parental consent, but they can't make personal medical decisions without parental consent? Hmph.

[TNNurse]

33. A 17yo should be able to make the decision.

She did after she turned 18.

I did not watch someone get chemo....I got chemo. I was 62. There were days I thought one more dose would kill me, My husband talked me through it. I am glad I did it, but would not do it again.

A child after about 14 or 15 should be able to decide....after the first time. Before that it is the parents' call.

I truly believe if you have had chemo after that age, it should be your call.

You cannot understand unless you have been through it.

[NameAlreadyTaken]

35. What about the patient's bill of rights?

In particular the right to refuse treatment...

[TryLogic]

37. My wife is undergoing chemotherapy.

I consider chemotherapy to be a carefully administered, 20th Century version of Medieval medicine.

[GETPLANING]

38. Ask a physician what they would do if they got a diagnosis of cancer

Close their practice, go home, spend time with family, die peacefully at home. They know.

[LisaL]

39. Nonsense.

[SunSeeker]

40. Depends on the type and stage of cancer, but generally that is simply not true.

My son's pediatrician got breast cancer and immediately went on chemo. That was years ago. She is fine now.

[obamanut2012]

41. yeah, no