October 6th, 2005
Contraception and cancer treatment
I spotted this article in The Irish Independent today, which Treasa has also commented on, and frankly, I just don’t get it.
Three members of the Mater Hospital’s board want to stop the treatment of three lung cancer patients in trials, because it may involve them using contraception. How can anyone conclude that the contraception is a worse evil than dying of cancer? Of the three people, one is a nun and one is a priest. Surely these members of the church, who presumably are against Euthanasia, follow Catholic teaching that it is up to God to decide who lives and dies. By denying people treatment they need by getting bogged down in an ethical quagmire, they are contravening that same view, and influencing the outcome of a person’s life.
When I was receiving chemo, and because I had a lung clot, I was given stuff to stop pregnancy (and bleeding of any kind, which is not an option when you’ve got a pulmonary embolism the size of a tennis ball). In the whole time I’ve been on maintanence, which just finished last month, I’ve been consistently warned about the dangers of pregnancy in relation to my treatment. Simply put, I was told one was incompatible with the other. The main drug that saved my life has foetal damage warnings all over it, so what are you going to do? Refuse the treatment to save your life because the Catholic Church doesn’t want you to prevent pregnancy artificially?
Surely the issue here, should be saving lives not fudging ethics at an crucial time in a cancer patient’s life.
What could be an even bigger issue is if one of the women fell pregnant and was faced with the possibility of abortion in order to continue her treatment.
October 6th, 2005 at 4:34 pm
Some of the clergy are just so head-smackingly stupid it’s beyond ridicule. You can actually picture the odd reasonable priest rolling their eyes and muttering “well done gobshites, just when it was looking safe to be seen in public with the dog-collar, you muppets go and bugger it up all over again”.
There maybe times when debates about ethics and medical treatment are required but this clearly isn’t one of them. This is proof that, sometimes, debate pays people a respect they’ve done nothing to deserve. The minister should be demanding their instant removal from their positions.
October 6th, 2005 at 4:35 pm
Just as an aside, cos I back everything that you are saying, but here’s a happy chemo story, if you know what I mean.
My pal found out she had non-hodgkins lymphona more than three years ago. She had a year of chemo and was on the pill as per the instructions of her doctors for all the reasons you have said.
She was more devastated by the fact she was told the treatment would more than likely, nearly 100 per cent, render her infertile, than receiving news of the cancer.
All this happened while she was living in London and then during her last chemo month she visited me and left her pill behind. To cut a long story short, she SOMEHOW got pregnant but didnt know because following the information from her doctors she imagined by chemo month 11 her fertility was gone.
Anyway it was some months later (6months into pregnancy) with a growing belly that we did a test. Her tummy grew huge in the previous two weeks but she still didnt think it was pregnancy as she couldnt.
The baby did receive the chemo from her last month of treatment, but thankfully her miracle baby is beautiful, healthy, smart and a right wee star. My pal has just had her second child. I always knew you only had to sit beside her or her sisters to get them pregnant.
Her doctors were very annoyed with her but since then everything is great, she’s had her recent 2 and a half year all-clear and is feeling great.
Here’s a link to a pic of the beautiful baby herself. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/redmum/43014800/in/set-940243/) And I hope you are feeling reasonably well Sinead, it sounds like you have a tough time.
(Hopefully you don’t think this is too much off topic, I have a tendency to ramble…)