I rarely listen to the radio but yesterday we spent quite a while travelling in the car and every now and then I would here the news headlines about the parents who took their child from hospital without the doctors consent. At one point the news reader spoke about how the doctors feared he could die within 24 hours if not given the right care. If you haven’t heard/read about it their son, Ashya King, is five years old and has a brain tumour called a medulla blastoma.
Even at the time I thought no parents would put their child in danger for no reason and I wondered what could have happened to force them to take such drastic actions. At another point I considered the fact that maybe he was only a few days from death anyway and they wanted him out of the hospital and surrounded by loved ones.
In either case I felt sorry the parents at the same time as thinking maybe I was just being too trusting and they really were doing something awful and putting their child at risk.
About 30 minutes before feeling compelled to write this post I saw this video posted on YouTube by Ashya King’s big brother Naveed. Please, if you haven’t already seen this video, watch it!