"I Want To End Trauma In My Life"

"Terminally-ill teenager Hannah Jones has told why she has refused surgery"

"Speaking about the decision that could prove fatal for her, she said defiantly: 'I have made my choice.' The 13-year-old won a legal battle against an attempt to force her to have a transplant to deal with her weak heart - a problem caused by years of treatment for leukaemia. Doctors told Hannah, from Marden, Herefordshire, she needed a transplant - but that the operation could kill her. Cruelly, not having the transplant means Hannah may be left with just six months to live. She told Sky News: 'I've been in hospital too much. I've had too much trauma. There's not a month or year that goes by where I have not had medical treatment. I didn't want to go through any more operations. I didn't want this and it's not my choice to have it. There's a chance I may be well and there's a chance I may not be as well as I could be. That's a chance I'm willing to take.'"

"Health officials went to the High Court to force her to undergo the operation, but the proceedings have now been abandoned. Her mother Kirsty said she had been told police would take her daughter away in a phone call after a locum GP raised concerns.
Sitting beside her daughter, she told Sky News: 'They said that if we didn't take her to hospital they would come and take her. We refused. A child protection lady came, and she was fabulous. She listened to what Hannah wanted, she went to the barrister's chambers and put Hannah's point across, and that ended proceedings.' Hannah's weakened heart can only pump a fraction of its normal capacity. And the drugs she would take to stop the body rejecting the new organ may allow the leukemia to return. Her father Andrew, 43, told The Daily Telegraph: 'It is outrageous that the people from the hospital could presume we didn't have our daughter's best interests at heart. Hannah had been through enough already and to have the added stress of a possible court hearing or being forcibly taken into hospital is disgraceful. It was hurtful to be accused of preventing her from doing anything, when everything we do is geared towards her happiness.'

Hannah Jones : 'They explained everything to me but I didn't want to go through any more operations. I'd had enough of hospitals and wanted to come home.' She was very aware that there was no chance of a cure and any treatment would only prolong her life, but at a cost.

In a letter to the Jones family, Herefordshire Primary Care Trust chief executive Chris Bull said the Trust had concluded that it was 'not appropriate' to seek a court order requiring Hannah to be admitted to hospital. He added that the teenager appeared to 'understand the serious nature of her condition' and that she 'demonstrated awareness that she could die'."

(Source)