A 10-year-old Amish girl with leukemia and her parents have fled their home in Ohio, leaving the country at one point, so that she won’t be forced into resuming chemotherapy treatments, the family’s attorney said Wednesday.

The family has been fighting a hospital in court for months after the parents decided to halt the treatments because they were making the girl sick.

They left their home in rural northeast Ohio just days before a state appeals court appointed a guardian in October to take over medical decisions for Sarah Hershberger, said attorney Maurice Thompson.

“They don’t want Sarah to be taken away,” he said.

Doctors at Akron Children’s Hospital believe Sarah’s leukemia is treatable, but say she will die without chemotherapy. The hospital went to court after the family decided to stop chemotherapy and treat Sarah with natural medicines, such as herbs and vitamins.

An appeals court ruling in October gave an attorney who’s also a registered nurse limited guardianship over Sarah and the power to make medical decisions for her. The court said the beliefs and convictions of her parents can’t outweigh the rights of the state to protect the child.

The family has appealed the decision to both the appeals court and the Ohio Supreme Court.

They have not had any contact with the guardian since the ruling, said Clair Dickinson, the guardian’s attorney.

There are no plans to ask the court to find the family or force the girl into chemotherapy while the case is being appealed.

He said Sarah’s last known chemotherapy session was in June, and that doctors have said she could die within a year if treatments don’t resume.

“I’m very concerned about her,” he said.

The girl has undergone alternative-therapy treatments and is doing well, Thompson said. The family told him that she has more energy and that CT scans show treatments are working.

Andy Hershberger, the Ohio girl’s father, said this past summer that the family agreed to begin two years of treatments for Sarah last spring but stopped a second round of chemotherapy in June because it was making her extremely sick.

Sarah begged her parents to stop the chemo and they agreed after a great deal of prayer, Hershberger said.

The family, members of an insular Amish community, shuns many facets of modern life and is deeply religious.

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