Why does God want her to die?
This kind of ignorance just drive me up the wall. Fine, let her die and she can go hang out with Jesus.
Twice in the past two years, she has been told to prepare to die. Twice, she has been rejected for a lung transplant because her case was deemed too difficult. Twice, she has nearly been sent home to Peru because doctors told her there was nothing more they could do here, and if there were, her insurance wouldn’t pay. She refused to believe them.
Then, doctors, social workers, friends, family, priests, politicians and strangers coalesced as a veritable army of guardian angels around her. They pushed for treatment and insurance. They found loopholes, hospital beds and ventilators. They prayed. They set up a “Save Maribel” Web site and Facebook page. They called news conferences in which Perez tearfully pleaded for her life. They raised $60,000 to save her.
So it was nothing less than shattering when, miraculously, a few weeks ago, one of the world’s largest lung-transplant programs, at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, agreed to take her, and Perez said no.
Her reason had nothing to do with breath. It was because of blood.
Perez had become a Jehovah’s Witness. The religion teaches that blood is sacred, the seat of one’s soul, and that in the Bible, God specifically prohibits the consumption of blood, whether by mouth or through veins in a transfusion. Many Jehovah’s Witnesses carry cards explaining that in an emergency they are not to receive blood and that no medical practitioner will be held liable if they die as a result.