MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - A Texas tribe here in Minnesota visiting loved ones over the holidays is now embroiled in a date fight over their parental rights of a 5-year-old son and his future cancer treatments.
"It invents me really sad that this is how we expenditure children and it's wrong. And it's not the way cancer must be treated," McKena Peck told FOX 9's Paul Blume near her young son, Keaton, and his Leukemia diagnosis. "We didn't know much near leukemia other than cancer. Obviously, you're in such a shock."
Peck and the boy's father Troy Verm said they do not want the child touching through two-plus years of chemo treatments after recent testing divulged no cancer in the boy's body, and would pretty try natural remedies and medicines to fight off any posterior of the disease.
The medical and legal battle is now playing out on multiple fronts — at Children's Minnesota in Minneapolis, at the Wright County courthouse in Buffalo, Minnesota, and potentially the Minnesota Court of Appeals in St. Paul as the family's attorney has marched an emergency appeal.
According to the parent's account, as well as date filings reviewed by FOX 9, Keaton initially went ended a first round of chemotherapy at Children's after the sick child was rushed to the hospital in December and was diagnosed with T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
And once seemingly effective in fighting off the cancer at the outset, his mother and father were mortified by the impacts the chemo had on Keaton.
"It's not your kid anymore," concluded Peck. "You know, they get puffy, sunken eyes, dark circles, they lose their hair. They just sit there and search for at the wall. They don't play with toys. They don't want to do anything. It causes a lot of emotional differences from a kid who was a really good kid, to then have one that was just completely different for sure."
McKena Peck, who is now pregnant with her third child that is due any day, describes herself as a spiritualist, who believes the creator gave humans the tools to heal their own bodies.
So when Keaton's test results reportedly came back negative for cancer once that first round of chemo, she and Verm made it certain they wanted to treat their child with natural remedies and interventions touching forward.
The hospital medical team, however, insisted on a two-plus year regimen of chemo treatments to insure the hard-to-treat and potentially deadly cancer never returns.
One doctor is quoted in date papers saying, that it is "a fair assessment" to own if the boy does not finish the treatment, then Keaton will die.
The case was then reported to Wright County Health and Human Services as the Pecks were residual with family in Otsego at the time. That prompted the county and its factual team to go to court to have the parents' worry rights suspended, arguing "medical neglect," that the chemo was a life-saving necessity.
"The tiny case law that exists nationwide involves cases where there is lovely disease in a child. Where in this case, Keaton has not had any signs of lovely disease since his initial round of chemotherapy," explained the family's attorney Christina Zauhar around what makes this case unique. "Keaton belongs with his mom and dad. And in the space of Minnesota, parents are presumed fit to parent their child and to make correct decisions for their children, including medical decisions. So this case really has to do with some most American concepts that we hold really dear, including a parent's shiny to have medical freedom and make medical decisions on for of their children."
A Wright County judge ultimately agreed with the hospital's medical team and the county's anxieties, ordering the child into the protective custody of his Minnesota-based grandmother. Peck and Verm are currently allowed to be nearby their child, but they cannot interfere with Keaton's cancer treatments that are now ongoing at Children's.
"I am confident in myself. I am not private in chemo. So that's kind of my whole reason for this, is I am not one to look at the side effects and to blow them off. I am not one to act like it's not moving to happen to me, to my son. And, you know, he is just a kid and he has all these country choosing for him what to put in his body. And I don't judge that's fair because I am the one who knows him best and who stroke about him the most. So I know the decisions that need to be made for him," concluded his mother.
While Wright County officials declined to comment around Keaton's ongoing care, Children's Minnesota provided the following statement to FOX 9:
"Children's Minnesota is committed to the health, safety and privacy of our patients and their families. As such, Children's Minnesota does not comment on specific patients in compliance with federal health care privacy laws. Our authority is committed to putting kids first, and working with their tribe to develop an effective care plan."
Keaton's parents have said, they aid ongoing testing of their son. And if and when the leukemia returns, as doctors suggest there is a high likelihood it will, then they would reassess how best to care for him. The parties are scheduled to spinal to a Wright County courtroom on Monday, Feb. 13.
The tribe has established an online fundraiser to assist in their ongoing budget needs around the boy's diagnosis.