“I’m going to die, but I also know what’s best for me.”

A British hospital has given up its attempt to force a 13-year-old girl to have a heart transplant against her will. Hanna Jones, who is chronically ill with leukaemia and a diseased heart, says that she is sick of hospital life and just wants to die at home surrounded by her family.

In an interview with the Daily Mail, she said: "I’m not a normal 13-year-old. I’m a deep thinker. I’ve had to be, with my illness. It’s hard, at 13, to know I’m going to die, but I also know what’s best for me."

Hereford Hospital had taken out a court order to remove Hannah from her parents’ care. But she managed to convince a child protection officer that she was ready to die at home with her parents and three siblings.

In the past two years alone Hannah has had six operations on her heart, which works at only 10 percent of capacity. Her mother is an intensive care nurse and says that she wants to spare her daughter the pain and exhaustion of treatment which might prolong her life, but at the cost of future pain: "If she had the transplant as a child it’s more likely she would need another one in four or five years time. Hannah has been through a lot of trauma and I’m quite happy with the decision she made. I think, for her, it was right." ~ Daily Mail, Nov 11