Parents plead guilty in son’s cancer death.
It’s an eye-catching headline. There are a lot of easier way to murder someone than giving them cancer.
But if you click the link, you’ll see that it’s actually manslaughter because they didn’t get his cancer treated. They’d find what felt like swollen lymph nodes, but then it would go away. Then it would come back. Then he was dead. Oops!
I’m no doctor, but I strongly believe lumps are bad, even if they come and go. If you walk into the doctor’s office and say “my son had a lump on his neck, but it’s gone now” the doctor will not say “great — thanks for coming by!” Lots of things can cause swollen lymph nodes. Including Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Grrrr.
It’s possible I’m projecting here. A few months ago I had swollen lymph nodes too and got put through a battery of tests that ranged from irritating to painful. I think the needles they use in needle biopsies are barbed. In my case it was nothing — I had a bad cold a week before a routine checkup and my nodes were still puffy.
I’m definitely venting though. Hodgkin’s lymphoma has an 80% recovery rate if treated. The rate is somewhat lower if ignored. Now those ex-parents are probably going to prison, where they’ll get proper medical treatment if they need it.
Check those lumps, people. Don’t worry about the cost, worry about the cancer.
It IS tragic. Our son had a swollen lymph node that we took him in to have checked out when he was 10. The doctor said the very scary word “I don’t like the look of that”. The good news was, it was a low-grade infection that had settled in and not cancer.
Manslaughter for keeping your kid from getting treatment purposefully, I could see – but it sounds like the parents didn’t have insurance – wasn’t letting people without insurance die something that people in a GOP debate crowd were CHEERING for just a couple months ago?
hmm – reading the comments below the story make it sound like the parents were a lot more negligent than the CNN story. Quality reporting as usual.
Not to be overly glib, but I wonder how much a manslaughter trial costs compared to cancer treatment? The more insanely enthusiastic teabaggers might have been cheering at Ron Paul’s response to the hypothetical seriously injured uninsured kid, but would that have changed if they found out the price difference wasn’t as big as they thought? (Ignoring the appalling indifference towards their fellow humans.)
The kid in this question may have cried wolf in the past, but the real moral of that fairy tale is that it only has to be a real wolf once. Faking a stomach ache to get out of chores is one thing — faking a recurring lump in the neck strikes me as an untenable plan for a first-grader.
Yes, medical bills can fuck up your life. But it’s my understanding that being a parent involves prioritizing your child’s welfare above your credit rating. (And they weren’t choosing between cancer treatment and losing their home — they didn’t bother to go to a clinic where someone with some training could have taken a look.)
The entire universe (including our own body) wants to kill us. Every advance we’ve made as a species since the first time we whacked two rocks together has been to hold the universe off a bit longer. Not seeking medical advice because of your meager bank account is making it too easy.