Teen-Age Patient Gets OK to Stop Transplant Drug

<p>Over the state’s objections, a teen-age transplant patient won a judge’s permission Saturday to return home and stop taking the medicine that could prolong his life.

Benito Agrelo, 15, who has undergone two liver transplants, said the anti-rejection drugs gave him headaches and made him irritable.

His mother said he might live only a month more without the drugs. But she said it would be a more comfortable life.

“Benny was granted exactly what he deserves,” said his mother, Armanda Agrelo. “He will get to live his life the way he wants. There will be no forcing of drugs for him.”

The teen-ager said he had thought about the decision for three months.

“The judge made the right decision,” he told WTVJ-TV in Miami on Saturday. “I should have the right to make my own decision. I’m tired of living in pain. I’d rather stay at home and live as close as I can to a natural life.”

Broward County Circuit Judge Arthur Birken would not comment on the case, saying it was not over.

Jocelin McBryan, a county children’s advocate, confirmed the basics of the order. “The state won’t be telling him what to do,” she said.

Benito received his first new liver when he was 8-years-old and his second in December, 1992, but he decided last summer to cut back on anti-rejection medicine because it caused fierce headaches and irritability, common side effects. Last October, he quit taking the medicine all together.

“The more he cut back the better he felt,” his brother, Frank Agrelo, said after a court hearing Saturday.