Wichita ? Through a port in her chest that once delivered powerful chemotherapy medication, vitamin C now flows into Katie Wernecke’s body.

A week after a lengthy legal battle between her parents and the state ended with 13-year-old Katie walking out of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, she’s had three such intravenous treatments. She may have two or three more during her stay at the Center for the Improvement of Human Functioning International in Wichita before returning with her father to their home in Agua Dulce, Texas.

“She’s had a good attitude about it,” her father, Edward Wernecke, told The Wichita Eagle. He added that she told him several times, “Dad, it’s only cancer.”

The treatments are an alternative approach to fighting Hodgkin’s disease, which Katie was diagnosed with in January. Center medical director Ron Hunninghake has said that in large doses, vitamin C can be converted into peroxide, which is toxic to cancer cells.

“She has a good foundation … a better-than-average prognosis from our perspective,” Hunninghake said.

After initial rounds of chemotherapy, the tumor in her chest appeared gone and the Werneckes refused the radiation treatments that doctors recommended. Her father has said they could put Katie at a heightened risk for breast cancer and other medical problems.

But a doctor told a social worker that Katie’s parents were endangering her life by refusing the treatment. In June, workers with Child Protective Services in Texas removed Katie from her family.

Doctors have said that Katie’s chances of surviving the disease had dwindled from 80 percent to as low as 20 percent.

Last week, a judge ruled that Katie should be returned to her parents’ custody as soon as she completed a round of chemotherapy and it was confirmed that her health was stable. District Judge Jack Hunter said the Werneckes should be allowed to decide what path of treatment to follow.

Although Edward Wernecke said he was satisfied with Hunter’s ruling, the judge still has not cleared the Werneckes of an earlier ruling saying they had medically neglected their daughter by choosing to delay her treatment.

Wernecke planned to go back to the Texas Supreme Court and ask that that ruling be reversed.