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LET ME DIE: Cancer patient fights religious parents who fear she’ll go to hell if they let her off life support
She is paralyzed from the neck down, tethered to breathing and feeding tubes — but Manhattan bank manager Grace Sung Eun Lee still managed to mouth four words Wednesday.
“I want to die.”
Doctors are trying to honor Lee’s wish, but her devout parents believe that removing the tubes is suicide — a sin that would condemn the 28-year-old to hell.
They’ve gone to court to keep the terminally ill brain-cancer patient on life support, turning a heartbreaking family tragedy into a right-to-die legal battle.
The case has put medical ethics and religion on a collision course, with lawyers arguing in two courtrooms while the patient at the center of the fight can do little more than blink her eyes.
“The thought of her dying, my heart tremors, everything goes black,” Grace’s father, prominent Queens pastor the Rev. Manho Lee, pleaded to a judge.
Her mother, Jin-ah Lee, does not believe her always dutiful daughter has given up on life — or that her death is inevitable.
“Despite all this confusion, she wants to go to heaven,” she told the Daily News. “I keep telling her she can get better. God’s going to save you.”
The congregation at Antioch Missionary Church is praying for Grace, who mentored young people. The day after the Korea Times wrote about the case, a Korean church group took out an ad that declared: “Giving up life is not the will of God.”
Lee’s Korean immigrant parents say she is depressed and not in her right mind.
“We believe that our daughter is really heavily medicated and unable to make her own decisions,” her father said Wednesday.
But her doctors at Long Island’s North Shore Hospital say she’s competent and has made her wishes clear.
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I think this is a much different argument than assisted suicide. The girl would be dead if not for human intervention. They put her on life support. She doesn’t want it. They are the ones meddling with her relationship with God.
HooHooNayNay
October 4th, 2012
How incredibly selfish to ask someone else to suffer mortifying agony so that you don’t have to cope with their death.
And before anyone gets pissy with me, I’m a hospice nurse.
piston honda
October 4th, 2012
So we can’t get pissy with hospice nurses, I am sorry I missed the memo. Yet I agree with you. One pulling themself off of life support is not suicide. Life support is artificial means that we use to keep people alive when they should just be allowed to die. It isn’t always God’s will to use such devices.
I am a married father of two that enjoys poetry and singing 17 centure Polish folk songs, so dont get pissy with me.
Corky
October 4th, 2012
I’m a nurse as well and she should be allowed to do what she wants. I realize her parents love her but to let her suffer like that is pure torture. On top of that, add lawyers to the mix–she’s already in hell.
jclady
October 4th, 2012
@HooHooNayNay — Kudos to you and I really appreciate your work!
(dealing solely with my mom and MIL)
Sarthurk
October 4th, 2012
This is obviously a classic example of a moral dilemma. And before anyone gets pissy with me, I’m NOT a philosopher!
Unruly Refugee
October 4th, 2012
I always say just leave me my trigger finger and leave me the hell alone. It’s her choice to live without the help of a damn machine that just subjects her to more and more pain.
I think her appointed time has passed — if that’s what she says.
Dano
October 4th, 2012
That’s why you need a Will which discribes what you want to do EXACTLY! If I was in this situation, my wife already knows that I do not want to live on life support. We both still have to write our Wills, though…
Unruly Refugee
October 4th, 2012
I wrote mine some time ago and had it notarized. That’s all you need. Pine box, no autopsy.
Jerry Manderin
October 4th, 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzgGTTtR0kc
*
HooHooNayNay
October 4th, 2012
Thank YOU, jclady. Every day is an amazing gift with my patients and their families who are my inspiration. Keep strong but please let us help in any way possible.
shockuhzulu
October 4th, 2012
This is what they call a “no win” situation.
skh.pcola
October 4th, 2012
“Manho.”
Hahahaha! *ahem* I’m probably going to Hell now, but that made me laugh.
Houston
October 4th, 2012
I’m not a nurse; although sometimes I dress up like one in the privacy of my…
JUST KIDDING!!!!
Fur nailed it as well as the other commentors. Living on life support is just giving cancer a longer period to make her suffer.
If you don’t have a living will make one now!
Chuck U Farley
October 4th, 2012
So, if the parents don’t get in the way of the nurses pulling the tubes, how is this suicide?
She’s incapable of doing it herself, she just wants it so.
Make it so.
Zonga
October 4th, 2012
How many people do you know who are paralyzed from the neck down? I know one. They pulled him through on life support. He’s happy now. He doesn’t have a brain tumor, but I believe in hope.
Unruly Refugee
October 4th, 2012
I know a guy who fell off a roof and now his life is hell, and the lives of his family are pretty much hell too. Intense anger.
Edith McCrotch
October 4th, 2012
Then the hospital needs to discharge her as a patient since they can no longer do anything more for her.
Hospice will be there.
Rightwingfeather
October 4th, 2012
How very tragic and sad.
If she is competent,and it certainly sounds like she is, it is her decision.
Her family in my opinion are not only in denial they are selfish and through all of this, extending her suffering.
"That Guy"
October 4th, 2012
“Giving up life is not the will of God.”
So pull the plug and find out what the “will of god” actually is…
hanoverfist
October 4th, 2012
“No one ever dies too young.
They die when they die.”
My mom (80 this year)
I tend to agree.
You die when you die.
I’m just happy to be on THIS side of the grass today.:-)
Thank you very nice.
Unruly Refugee
October 4th, 2012
What about Masada?
Frosteetoes
October 5th, 2012
I supported the Schindlers in the case of Terri Schiavo but this is a different scenario. This woman is in pain and suffering and is cognitive enough to make her own medical decisions.
In the case of Terri Schiavo she was diagnosed to be in a PVS yet occasionally demonstrated some reaction when interacting with her parents who wanted to care for her when her estranged opportunist husband insisted on starving and dehydrating her to death.
How did the parents manage to get control over this woman’s decisions?
Unruly Refugee
October 5th, 2012
I was praying for Terri Schiavo too. Sad, sad story.
scr_north
October 5th, 2012
This is so very sad and I suspect it’s tearing the family apart. The parents should act like parents and realize their daughter wants to start her journey away from this earth and they should bow to her desire and support and love her to the end. I do hope they’ll see the light before a judge has to step in and turn a sad but ultimately fulfilling act into a three ring legal circus. In the meantime I’ll say a little prayer for Grace to have peace and for her parents to let her go.
sablegsd
October 5th, 2012
She’s 28 fucking years old. Why are they getting any input at all?
Jorel Lives!
October 5th, 2012
A Christian would say: If the woman is Saved, then let the Lord take her home. But if there is doubt as to her Salvation, all must be done to keep her alive in the hopes of her accepting Christ as her Savior–better to suffer in the temporal now than to spend an eternity in Hell. Everything else is irrelevant, since what’s important is that God’s searches the heart and knows who is sincere and will want to be in Heaven with him, and those who lie to themselves and Him, and who desire not that which is above. I think she’s Saved.
Joe
October 5th, 2012
I was so upset over the Terri Schiavo case that my dad would turn off the TV whenever they would talk about her. These cases make me very sad.
Carlos The Jackal
October 5th, 2012
“Rev. Manho Lee”
Obama’s ‘other’ pastor…
Boobie the Rocket Dog
October 5th, 2012
If her four mouthed words were, “Let me meet Jesus,” would they turn her down then?
And, to repeat what was asked severasl times above, how did the parents GET control? If she’s a bank manager the bank’s insurance is picking up the bill, yes? Even as next of kin, they would either have to have a letter signed by her giving them that authority or she would have to be judged incompetent. In NYC, “… * everybody is entitled to a long and costly trial.”
*Armand Assante as Ned Ravine
y'all'll die faster under obummercare
October 5th, 2012
pissy barry soetoro, “that’s just how pissy christians’ll do ya”
Mountain Dog
October 5th, 2012
If the only weapon she has to fight with is her mouth, and they are trying to deny her the right to use that weapon, what does she have to live for.
If she didn’t have a family or medical staff to look after her and keep her alive would God allow her to live?
I think the decision has already been made by the Creator. The woman cannot live on her own, she cannot keep herself alive, and she is requesting to let God’s will be done. Not man’s will, God’s will. He has a better place waiting for her, no pain, no tears, no sorrow.
Mountain Dog
October 5th, 2012
Terri Schiavo Wanted to live, they murdered her. That’s different.
Unruly Refugee
October 5th, 2012
CBN ran a segment on this today. They said she was going to die in a very short time anyway. Still the father is a preacher and thinks it would be wrong to let her go. CBN seems to agree on that, saying that we are created in God’s image and it would be wrong.
My opinion is that it would not be “killing” her, it would be just letting her die — that is what is happening to her anyway, she IS dying and she stated that she did not want to wait any longer and have to suffer anymore. The only reason she is alive is because of the unnatural devices they have hooked up to her to keep her in suffering.
Boobie the Rocket Dog
October 6th, 2012
UPDATE: court-says-paralyzed-cancer-stricken-woman-has-right-to-die/
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/10/06/new-york-court-says-paralyzed-cancer-stricken-woman-has-right-to-die/