Cancer Returns for Teen who fought Custody

http://www.lubbockonline.com/stories/010407/sta_010407068.shtml

HARLINGEN - A teen at the center of a bitter custody battle between her parents and the state over her medical treatment is again fighting cancer that has aggressively returned, her father said Wednesday.

Katie Wernecke, 14, felt pain near her lower ribs that turned out to be a large mass, Ed Wernecke said Wednesday. According to the family's "pray for Katie" Web site, a medical scan found "multiple hot spots" of cancer.

The state placed Katie in a Houston foster home when her parents refused radiation treatments for her Hodgkin's disease, a cancer of the lymph nodes.

In subsequent custody hearings, the Werneckes said chemotherapy already had killed the cancer and they feared the radiation would do more harm than good.

But a family court judge kept Katie in foster care because social workers and an oncologist said her odds of survival were at about 20 percent without further radiation treatment.


Long story short-MD Anderson right, family wrong.

but an oncologist that believes/says there is no need for further radiation because a 1 in 5 chance can't be doubled by radiation - if that is what he said - is out of the mainstream and the judge should have known that.