This 5-Year-Old Girl Picked Heaven Over the Hospital, and Her Parents Are Respecting Those Wishes

Much of Julianna Snow's short life has been spent suffering through treatments at the hospital. And even though she's just 5 years old, she knows that's not how she wants to spend another minute.

Although Julianna is stable at the moment, doctors agree that she is dying of Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, an incurable neurodegenerative illness where even the common cold can be deadly. Not only has Julianna's rare form of CMT weakened her arms and legs, but it has also attacked the muscles that control her breathing.

Julianna's mother, Michelle Moon, is a neurologist and was instrumental in finding her daughter's diagnosis. Trusting her medical training and mother's intuition, Michelle dug for answers when Julianna wasn't able to sit up by 9 months and other doctors thought that she was just a late walker and didn't see it as a worrisome developmental delay.

But after the devastating CMT diagnosis, Julianna has only gotten worse, and Michelle is trusting her gut on this one too: her daughter is suffering and knows what she wants. Michelle describes the conversation she had with Julianna in a post from their blog that chronicles the family's journey. When she asked what her daughter would like to happen if she were to get sick again, her daughter picked heaven without her family over having to return to the hospital.

Even though Julianna is very specific with her plan, it's certainly not a simple request that is easy to obey. Should a 5-year-old even have the right to make that kind of decision? But on the other hand, how could her heartbroken parents ignore their daughter's dying wish?