LIFE MATTERS MEDIA STAFF

A terminally ill Minnesota teenager had a “celebration of life” party before entering into a hospice.

Morgan Long, 19, was recently told by doctors at the Mayo Clinic that there was nothing more they could do to stop the rare brain cancer that was first diagnosed when she was only 17 months old.

During Friday’s event held at AAD Shrine in Hermantown, each family member in attendance was given a box containing endangered monarch butterflies. They gathered in the parking lot and released them into the woods, according to the Duluth News Tribune. Long collects butterfly-related items, and has a tattoo of a butterfly on her foot.

“Why in the heck do I want people to come and see me when I’m dead?” mother Molly Long said, quoting her daughter. “I want to see people when I’m alive. Can we have a party? Let’s have fun.”

Hospice aims to provide comfort care and pain management rather than aggressive treatments – usually for terminally ill patients with six months or less to live. Hospice is most often used when curative treatments are no longer effective.