More than 1,000 people converged on a Wisconsin town Friday to honor a 14-year-old girl with a fatal illness who has chosen end-of-life hospice care over surgery.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jerika Bolen has\u00a0who has Spinal Muscular Atrophy Type 2, a disease which is often fatal for adolescents. She has to use a power wheelchair, a ventilator to help her breathe for 12 hours each day, and has had more than 30 surgeries since being diagnosed at just eight months old, with her muscles further deteriorating after each procedure.<\/p>\n
At the end of August, rather than undergo another surgery, Bolen has instructed her mother to pull the plug on her ventilator and leave her to die.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“There were a lot of tears, but then I realized I\u2019m going to be in a better place, and I\u2019m not going to be in this terrible pain,” Bolen told the Appleton Post-Crescent<\/a> last week. “I\u2019ve been working on it and thinking about it for way longer than anyone else has.”<\/p>\n
Bolen’s mother, Jen, has vowed to spend the summer fulfilling her daughter’s final wishes, which include\u00a0trips to the movies, fireworks with her grandparents, sleepovers with friends.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And the prom.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Clad in a blue-green gown, Jerika arrived at the venue after receiving an escort from 17 Appleton police squad cars and a fire truck. The Post-Crescent reported that she received bouquets of flowers from as far afield as Kuwait.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Well-wishers came from far afield, too. John Current drove his family to Appleton from California, bringing a stuffed animal as a gift.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s inspiring, it\u2019s sad and emotional,” Current said. “It\u2019s the whole thing. She just captivated me …\u00a0out there on the dance floor [she looks] like she\u2019s living life.”<\/p>\n
The first dance honors went to Jerika’s mother, Jen. The song? Martina McBride’s “In My Daughter’s Eyes”.<\/p>\n
Click for more from the Appleton Post-Crescent.\u00a0<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n
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More than 1,000 people converged on a Wisconsin town Friday to honor a 14-year-old girl with a fatal illness who has chosen end-of-life hospice care over surgery.\u00a0 Jerika Bolen has\u00a0who has Spinal Muscular Atrophy Type 2, a disease which is often fatal for adolescents. She has to use a power wheelchair, a ventilator to help Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}