For almost a year, the medical cannabis that Alex Repetski has been administering to his three-year-old daughter has been against the law. All that just changed with the Supreme Court of Canada’s recent unanimous decision.
Repetski gives Gwenevere cannabis oil to treat epilepsy. Under rules in place until this week, cannabis oil has been illegal because medical pot users were only permitted to use dried marijuana.
The court ruled that restricting medical marijuana patients to the cured form infringed on their rights, and said users should be able to choose their method of medicating.
For Gwenevere, cannabis oil has been life-changing. Repetski says almost a year ago, his daughter’s seizures were so bad, Gwenevere could hardly function.
“She couldn’t do much, she could barely sit on her own,” said Repetski.
Brain scans showed that she was experiencing perpetual seizures at a sub-clinical level, which means her brain was seizing even when no physical sign existed.
The family had tried eight, Dr-perscribed, anti-epileptic medications, but were unsuccessful in the seizures, and came with horrible side-effects. Then Repetski read about cannabis oil and about how one of the chemical compounds in marijuana — cannabidiol, or CBD — can help control seizures without causing the psychoactive marijuana “high” effect that comes with THC.
The family spoke to their doctors about the treatment, but were told there wasn’t enough evidence on using marijuana for epilepsy. Repetski stubbornly decided to do his own research.
“One of the doctors was kind enough to take the time and comb through all of it and decided that while he couldn’t guide us on dosing, he was certain it would not hurt her in any way,” Repetski said.
“Nothing else was working, so he gave us a recommendation.”
He was not going to ask his daughter to smoke marijuana, so Repetski learned how to take the dried flowers and created his oil marijuana oil in his kitchen. He sent it to a lab to test it for safety, then, he began giving a small amount of oil to his daughter orally, three times a day.
Two days after they started on the oil in November, Gwen had one minor seizure. Since then, she has been completely seizure-free.
Gwenevere is now growing exponentially in her development.
“She’s crawling, she’s learning to walk, she’s playing with toys, she’s feeding herself, she’s bothering her brother – her quality of life is 1,000 per cent increased,” he said.
(Canada: Man Successfully Treats Daughter’s Epileptic Seizures with Cannabis Oil – Weed Finder™ News)