Terminally Ill Bank Manager With Brain Cancer Wins Right To Die
Oct. 5 2012, Published 6:19 a.m. ET
By Debbie Emery - Breaking Celebrity News Reporter
Terminally ill, tethered to breathing tubes and paralyzed from the neck down, Manhattan bank manager Grace Sung Eun Lee has finally gotten her one wish granted.
"I want to die," struggled out the 28-year-old, who is at the center of a moral and legal battle between her devoutly religious parents who believe suicide would condemn her to hell and doctors trying to fulfill her request, reported the New York Daily News.
After the emotional stand-off that pitched religious beliefs of Korean Christian church against the right to die, a judge on Friday ruled that Lee can pass on peacefully and have her life support machine turned off.
As her lawyers battled in court over recent months, the subject of their wrangling who had moved from Seoul as an eighth-grader could barely blink her eyes after being diagnosed with brain cancer last fall.
Before then she was a vibrant, successful, professional working as a financial manager at Bank of America and training to run the New York City Marathon, when a month before the race she was struck down by a deadly tumor that doctors found in her brain stem.
Radiation and chemotherapy helped her regain her strength but then she took a downturn and in September suffered a seizure and was put on a ventilator with a breathing tube – given months or even weeks to live.