An autistic child, stricken with cancer, went five months without treatment because his mother withheld medications that she thought would hasten his death, as reported by the Associated Press for Yahoo News.
The mother, K.L., from Salem, Massachusetts, is currently on trial for attempted murder.
K.L. testified that she thought the side effects of her son’s prescribed medications would kill him before his cancer would. She claimed that she followed doctor’s orders, most of the time, until the final phase of her son’s treatment.
K.L. said that she withheld cancer treatment from her son, J.F., because she “didn’t want to make him any sicker.” She also told her son’s doctor – at least two or three times – that her son “had had it.”
In court K.L. said, “He was just not capable of getting through any more chemotherapy. I really felt that it could out-villainize the disease — the medicine could — because he was very, very fragile.”
J.F. died in 2009 at the age of 9.
K.L. has been charged with attempted murder, child endangerment and assault and
battery.
The defense has rested its case and prosecutors rested after calling a single witness. Prosecutors had called upon a psychiatrist to attest to K.L.’s state of mind when she had made the decision not to medicate her child: He found that she was not suffering from any mental impairment.
J.F. was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma in 2006. His oncologist testified in court that the cancer had an 85 to 90 percent cure rate – after following an intensive treatment plan for two years.
J.F. had periodic hospitalizations, hospital clinic visits for chemotherapy treatment and, his mother was instructed to administer two to three cancer medications when at home.
The boy’s cancer went into remission after a few months of treatment. But, the cancer returned – and was now in the form of leukemia – by February 2008.
Also during February 2008 the doctors learned that K.L. had not been administering J.F.’s medications – for five months.
When asked in court, by her lawyer, why she had made the decision to halt her son’s treatment K.L. said, “He was very, very sick and I was afraid, and I did not want to make him any sicker. I was afraid that if he got any sicker than he was, then he would die.”
Prosecutors presented K.L. as a resentful woman because her ex-husband, E.F., did very little to help in the care of J.F. E.F. left the marriage when the boy was 3.
K.L. had the brunt of caring for the child that not only suffered from autism, but also allergies and other health issues before succumbing to cancer.
K.L. admitted that she told her son’s doctors that he was doing well with his at-home chemotherapy treatments.
When the doctor’s first discovered the problem, via unfilled prescriptions, K.L. told them that the pharmacy was at fault and that they had made an error in their billing.
When asked, by Assistant District Attorney Kate MacDougall, why she didn’t medicate her sick child, K.L. said, “I didn't actually see the cancer make him very sick. What I saw make him very sick was the two weeks they blasted him with chemotherapy.”
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