A 17-year-old girl forced by the courts to undergo chemotherapy for cancer who was released from the hospital last month got to spend a day in New York shopping with her mom thanks to the Make A Wish Foundation.
The teen, identified only as Cassandra C., who went home to Windsor Locks at the end of April, wished she could go on a shopping spree with her mom and the organization made that happen.
A limousine carted them around the city on their day trip.
Doctors said in April that her Hodgkin lymphoma, diagnosed in September, is in remission.
Cassandra and her mother initially refused the chemo. They have said they wanted to explore more natural alternative treatments.
The state Department of Children and Families stepped in and a Juvenile Court judge removed her from her home and ordered her to undergo chemo.
The case eventually went to the state Supreme Court, which ruled in January that Connecticut wasn't violating Cassandra's rights.
The case centered on whether the girl was mature enough to determine how to treat her cancer. Several other states recognize the mature minor doctrine.
Connecticut's high court found that Cassandra, who ran away during a home visit in November, had demonstrated she did not have the maturity to make her own medical decisions.
She will be free to make her own medical decisions when she turns 18 in September.
Cassandra was confined at Connecticut Children's Medical Center and underwent six rounds of treatment that doctors say will give her an 85 percent chance of survival. Without the chemotherapy, doctors said it was almost certain the teen would die.
