NEW YORK, Oct. 7 (UPI) -- A terminally ill New York City woman who won a lawsuit against her parents to allow a hospital to disconnect a breathing tube has decided she wants to live.
SungEun Grace Lee, 28, who is now paralyzed from the neck down by a brain tumor and communicates by blinking, on Saturday told with her lawyer that she has decided to live out the rest of her life, The New York Times reported.
The decision came an a four-judge appellate court panel upheld a lower-court ruling that Lee was mentally capable of making decisions about her own care, including whether or not to disconnect her breathing tube.
Her parents contended that she was incapable of making such decision because of the medicated state she was in.
Lee's lawyer, David A. Smith, said Lee told him of her decision from her hospital bed Saturday morning, and that she had given her father, the Rev. Man Ho Lee, the proxy right to make healthcare decisions should she become incapacitated.
"When I asked her if she's doing this to make peace with her parents, she told me she was doing it to make peace with her parents and to make peace with God," Smith said.
Terry Lynam, a spokesman for North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset on Long Island where Lee is on life support, said the hospital will honor her wishes, "whatever they may be."
