Pubdate: Wed, 16 Sep 2015
Source: Record, The (Kitchener, CN ON)
Copyright: 2015 Metroland Media Group Ltd.
Contact:  http://www.therecord.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/225
Author: Sheryl Ubelacker
Page: A2

CROSS-COUNTRY JOURNEY FOR MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Denied prescription in Alberta, family turns to Ontario

TORONTO - An Alberta mother whose daughter has severe epilepsy has
travelled to Ontario for a medical marijuana prescription after the
girl's doctor said he was no longer allowed to provide permission to
purchase the product.

In 2013, Sarah Wilkinson had started extracting cannabis oil from
dried marijuana - purchased from a licensed grower with a prescription
from a neurologist at Alberta Children's Hospital - to prevent
life-threatening seizures in her eight-year-old daughter Mia.

But in July, the physician declined to renew the prescription because
of a hospital policy based on the position of Alberta Health Services,
the provincial health authority, which does not support the use of
medical marijuana for pediatric patients with epilepsy.

Wilkinson said the cannabis oil is the only therapy that has worked to
stop Mia's seizures, caused by a rare type of epilepsy called Ohtahara
syndrome.

Despite taking 30 to 40 anti-convulsive pills daily, Mia would suffer
up to 100 seizures a day, said her mother. But since starting daily
doses of oral cannabis oil 19 months ago, she has not had a single
seizure.

On Monday, Mia was seen by a doctor at the Canadian Cannabis Clinic in
St. Catharines and left with a prescription for dried marijuana, which
her mother can fill from a federally licensed producer after returning
to their Airdrie, Alta., home.

"It's a big relief. I don't have to worry about when I run out of her
meds," said her mother, who had been worried about her dwindling
supply of medical-grade marijuana purchased with the initial
prescription.

Wilkinson said she turned to cannabis because nothing else was helping
her child, whose seizures could be so severe she would stop breathing
and have to be resuscitated and rushed to hospital.

"I really took a big leap of faith with that," she said of the
cannabis oil, adding that within 24 hours of the first dose, Mia's
seizures had completely stopped.

Without the treatment, "we would have waited for the next big seizure
and she would have died. There's not a really nice way to say that.
"Now, we can all breathe." For Mia, tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC,
appears to be the ingredient that controls her seizures, while others
with different forms of epilepsy benefit from another component of the
plant called cannabidiol, or CBD.

Pharmacologist-toxicologist McIntyre Burnham, co-director of the
epilepsy research program of the Ontario Brain Institute in Toronto,
said about 30 per cent of people with seizures don't respond to any
anti-convulsive medications.

His program plans to seek Health Canada approval for a clinical trial
in adults of a cannabidiol in capsule form being developed by Canadian
medical marijuana producer Tilray, which he hopes will start in about
a year.

While THC does stop seizures in some people, it's also the active
ingredient in marijuana that "makes you high," said Burnham, whereas
CBD does not.

Researchers agree clinical trials are needed to determine if the
various strains and extracts of marijuana can benefit patients with a
variety of conditions, and cannabidiol appears "quite promising" for
epilepsy, he said.

But "people are thinking it's a wonder drug. I think it's too early to
say that ... It's not going to be for everyone. It will help some
people and not help others."

Kunvar Mudhar does believe CBD is a wonder drug.

A year ago, she started giving cannabis oil high in CBD to her son
Zen, who has intractable epilepsy related to cerebral palsy that is
resistant to all anti-convulsive medications.

As a baby, he had been put on a special diet, which reduced the number
and severity of his seizures - but he was still experiencing about 150
a day.

"The first night I gave him the first dose, we started off very low,"
said Mudhar of Mississauga, who makes cannabis oil from dried
marijuana purchased through a doctor's prescription.

Within a day, the number of Zen's seizures dropped to about 30, and
with a slight increase in the dose, they disappeared for months.

Mudhar had been treating Zen, now 7, with an oil high in CBD and low
in THC, but she also had on hand an oil extract she'd prepared with a
two-to-one ratio of CBD to THC.

One night in February, her son suffered a grand mal seizure, despite
the daily cannabis therapy.

"His body was jerking. He started to turn grey-blue," she said. "At
that point, I had nothing else to give him. I had already called the
paramedics and was waiting for them to come.

"The last thing I did was grab that (higher THC-dose) oil and rub it
on his gums - and the seizure stopped."

Mudhar said she would have been happy if the cannabis oil had just
reduced his seizures by a significant amount.

"But this is amazing. To me, this is more than a miracle that Zen has
seizure-free days."
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MAP posted-by: Matt