Appleton teen makes heartbreaking decision to die

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APPLETON – But for her power wheelchair, Jerika Bolen is every bit an active 14-year-old girl – a hopeless romantic with shiny purple hair, a love of alternative music and an addiction to Facebook.

She has a maturity and wisdom that belies her age, and on a recent spring day, as other 14-year-olds were finishing their final year of middle school and making summer plans, Jerika told her mother she was ready to die.

Complete story:

postcrescent.com/story/news/2016/07/14/appleton-teen-makes-heartbreaking-decision-die/86510526/
 
Fourteen is not old enough to make an informed decision on this subject. She needs a change in pain medication before they can even begin to consider pulling the plug.
 
At age fourteen? At this age, she can be intellectually informed, but this is, quite literally, a deadly situation. If nobody will talk her out of this, God may leave her to their sin, and He inspired the Psalmist to say:
So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts, to follow their own counsels. (Psalm 81:12, ESV)
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St. Paul, in fact, allowed the Corinthian church to leave a man to his desires:
… you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. (1 Corinthians 5:5, ESV)
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We can only trust in God if this girl does go through with this, and may He have mercy if no man or woman can convince her otherwise.
“When I decided, I felt extremely happy and sad at the same time,” she said. “There were a lot of tears, but then I realized I’m going to be in a better place, and I’m not going to be in this terrible pain. I’ve been working on it and thinking about it for way longer than anyone else has.”
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“A better place.” Only God will know… 😦
 
Reminds me of a case in the Netherlands where they have legal euthanasia on request. A young dancer in her 20s, hurt her foot and could never dance again and asked to be killed, and this was done.

Do people really not see adversity as something to face and grow through?

We have an appalling young suicide rate here in Ireland. Makes me want to shake them.
 
I read another article about her and it seems she is more concerned about the trouble she is putting her mother through. I actually know of 2 people who were on their backs for 20 years and had a miraculous recovery. This may or may not happen but there may be also improved pain management in time.
 
zamyrabyrd said:
I read another article about her and it seems she is more concerned about the trouble she is putting her mother through. I actually know of 2 people who were on their backs for 20 years and had a miraculous recovery. This may or may not happen but there may be also improved pain management in time.
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The bolded part concerns me, because such concerns can be a part of depression. 😦
 
RPRPsych said:
The bolded part concerns me, because such concerns can be a part of depression. 😦
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How the mother accepts this, I really don’t know except the parents of Terri Schiavo were faithful until the end.
 
We had a nephew who chose to die. He needed a heart-lung transplant to live & he decided against it. He was only 16. It is sad, but chronic pain is hard to live with - something I know from my own experience with it.
 
If the Catholic Catechism is concordant with reality, her only option is to endure the lesser of two evils: temporal misery, broken dreams and hopelessness, up to another 80 years of that, or irrevocable, unmitigated and relentless misery and hopelessness in the next life. She can’t escape pain, she just can’t. Life being essentially a lottery, she simply picked the wrong ticket, sadly. Again, if she had picked a good ticket, she’d be a thriving teenager with lots of friends, who loves life and has an exciting future to look forward to. If the CC is right, she will meet a stern judge when she dies.
 
This is terribly sad. It seems slightly different, though, than if someone were going to actively euthanize her. I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong for cancer patients with a grim prognosis to forego further treatment, and although this poor girl is young she seems to be in a very similar situation.
 
fladreamer said:
If the Catholic Catechism is concordant with reality, her only option is to endure the lesser of two evils: temporal misery, broken dreams and hopelessness, up to another 80 years of that, or irrevocable, unmitigated and relentless misery and hopelessness in the next life. She can’t escape pain, she just can’t. Life being essentially a lottery, she simply picked the wrong ticket, sadly. Again, if she had picked a good ticket, she’d be a thriving teenager with lots of friends, who loves life and has an exciting future to look forward to. If the CC is right, she will meet a stern judge when she dies.
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I think that, in any instance, ~80 years of imperfect temporal pain is a better deal than an eternity of perfected pain… Yes, it may sound cruel, but it is certainly true.

May God have mercy.
 
Lord Jesus, please have mercy on her and grant her a change of heart. Amen.
 
It’s sad to see a anyone, especially a young person, go through what she is going through. However, she is stopping her ventilator, which is considered extraordinary means by the Church. She has no obligation to stay on the vent indefinitely. She is not committing suicide which some of you seem to think.
 
Bruised_Reed said:
It’s sad to see a anyone, especially a young person, go through what she is going through. However, she is stopping her ventilator, which is considered extraordinary means by the Church. She has no obligation to stay on the vent indefinitely. She is not committing suicide which some of you seem to think.
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i’ve always thought extraordinary means meant more than that. catholic.com/quickquestions/what-is-the-churchs-teaching-on-extraordinary-care-for-the-sick seems to tell a different story.
 
She’s been going through more than just being put on a ventilator:

“They were more aggressive in attempting treatments than some families, and neither Jen nor Jerika have regrets. Jerika, they believe, has lived longer than she otherwise would have…For kids with spinal muscular atrophy, “the standard of care is often comfort measures from the beginning,” she said. When taking on any course of treatment, there’s always the option to stop if it isn’t offering the quality of life that was hoped, she said.

““They did it all,” she said.”

They also speak of various surgeries. Entering hospice care and receiving only palliative measures does not, again, seem to me to be the same as actively being killed, which of course is terribly wrong.

Finally, for those commenters worried that she’s stopping treatment so as not to be a burden on her mother–I didn’t see any hint of that in the article. After the last surgery, she realized that she’d been doing these TREATMENTS for the sake of her family.

Again, this is terribly sad, but I don’t think it rises to the level of assisted suicide.

What I DON’T like is the fact that this article was published in the first place. Of course the author would be praising its young subject and her courage throughout her ordeal, but the tone comes off as celebrating death and choosing to die. That is very much in line with our screwed-up culture.
 
Hatikvah said:
I think that, in any instance, ~80 years of imperfect temporal pain is a better deal than an eternity of perfected pain… Yes, it may sound cruel, but it is certainly true.

May God have mercy.
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No, it doesn’t just sound cruel, it is cruel! Unjust, in humane! You try and live in chronic pain or with a terrible, crippling disease and see how it breaks down you psychologically and physically!

I have an aunt with post heretic neuralgia and she lives in pain of around 4 - 6 out of 10, all day, 24 hrs/ 7 days a week, 365 days a year where it feels like a knife is stabbing her in the back. There is no cure, she’s had it for 20 years now and treatments only work so well, until her body develops a tolerance and immunity to the pain relief. There is pain and then there is chronic, ungodly pain at a level I’m positive you have never experienced or seen and believe me, you don’t want too. So too just tell people to suck it up and live in pain is down right cruel and insensitive.

How could a supposedly kind and loving God condemn someone with a disease like this 14 year olds or my aunts or a child with butterfly syndrome and let them suffer a terrible existence on Earth with little to zero quality of life (which I know the Catholic Church doesn’t actually care about) and turn around and say, live with the pain and suck it up because if you end your life you go too Hell. That is NOT loving AT ALL!!!
 
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