Cannabis Oil Update And Another Regurgitation of Sophie's History For Emphasis*

photo by Lynn Johnson for National Geographic Magazine

My friend Ray Mirzabegian is featured in an article about medical marijuana in this month's National Geographic magazine. Ray is the man who has a young daughter with refractory epilepsy, who drove to Colorado several years ago when he heard about the the Stanley Brothers and their cannabis oil. He learned everything he could about the oil, grows and makes it for a hell of a lot of children and adults here in southern California through Realm of Caring California. He's also one of the nicest guys on the planet, and I don't know what I'd do without him.

Right now, we've gone back to the original California Charlotte's Web that Ray makes and have stopped using Charlotte's Web Hemp Oil. While CWHO "worked" moderately well for Sophie, we've been struggling to find the same degree of seizure control and have decided to go back to the product we used when all the really good stuff happened. Sophie is, of course, on a little more than half of the benzodiazepine that she was on a year and a half ago, and if you read anything about withdrawing benzos, you realize it's a horror show. I've read adults report that they can experience withdrawal symptoms months and months after they're off the drug completely. If it's hard for you to imagine how difficult the process is, imagine peeling back your scalp and bathing your brain in a powerful narcotic twice a day for eight years. That would be Sophie. I don't think we can properly assess cannabis oil's true effectiveness until she is off the benzo completely, and that might take us another six to eight months. Then we've got to work on Vimpat, another powerful drug that she's been on since October, 2008 when it was newly approved for use in epileptics over the age of 17. Do the math.

In the meantime, though, she has some stunningly good days and no really bad ones. We are quite tolerant of one seizure or so a day, especially since they're brief and she seems to recover rapidly. A bad day might be several seizures in a day with drooling and clamminess, but they're not happening more than once or twice a month. Did you know that we haven't used Diastat, the rectal Valium rescue med, since we began the oil? KNOCK THREE TIMES.

I went to a party on Saturday night for a friend of mine and found myself engaged in conversation with a couple of people about our experience with cannabis oil. I told one man, a physician, that Sophie had been on 22 drugs in her twenty years. He said, That's impossible! There aren't even 22 antiepileptic drugs! I began naming them and then called it a day when he conceded that he hadn't heard of several of them. When I got home later that night, I wrote them all down and sent them to my friend to forward on to him. Here's what the list looks like:

Sophie’s Drug History 1995-2015

ACTH

Prednisone

Nitrazepam

Carbamazepine

Depakote/Depakene

Phenobarbitol

Vigabatrim

Felbatol

Neurontin

Lamictal

Banzel

Klonopin

Ativan

Diastat

Keppra

Zonegran

Topamax

Trileptal

Frisium/Onfi

Vimpat

Micronor (progesterone to help mitigate the hormonal swings that exacerbate seizures)

IvIg (intravenous immunoglobulin, adminstered for ESES, 2010, 2013)

Ketogenic Diet (two six-month trials, 1995 and 1999)

What was interesting to me was when I checked on the drugs -- when they were approved for use by the FDA and for what age child. You know where this is going, right? Many of those drugs were brand-spanking new when we gave them to Sophie (like Vimpat, the one she's been on for seven years), several were only available through compassionate protocol or through pharmacies in England and Canada or Germany and many were approved only for use in children over twelve or seventeen, if at all. At no point was Sophie on one of these drugs at a time, but rather on multiple combinations -- a near constant titrating up and down and adding and subtracting for the first six or so years. I don't feel like listing the side effects of these drugs or even the reasons why we discontinued them. Think anorexia, thrush, extreme irritability, sleeplessness (for YEARS), severe sedation, dehydration, recurrent fevers, rashes, hallucinations, psychotic behavior, increased seizures, new seizure types, headaches, nausea, ataxia, excessive drooling, impacted stool, depression (yes, Sophie's neurologist diagnosed depression many years ago, so we discontinued the drug). Well, I guess I listed some of them. 

I don't remember when, but at some point I just plain refused to add a third drug to a regimen until one of the two she was on could be weaned. Not a week goes by that I don't hear of kids on three, four, five and up drugs, still seizing. What the hell? When Sophie was about twelve, I refused to try any more new drugs unless Jesus Christ offered them to me. I firmly believe that relying on Jesus was no more or less scientific than relying on the old dart board that the epilepsy docs used. No one reported me to Child Protective Services. Sweet Jesus -- he never showed up.

Did I mention that at no point was Sophie seizure-free or even better? Can I emphasize enough that despite these various combinations of drugs/poisons and the good intentions of several superb neurologists and scientists, no one really knew what the hell was going on in Sophie's brain other than that it was supremely dysfunctional? Did I mention that during these nineteen years (and continuing today), Sophie received Chinese herbal teas and acupuncture as well as regular appointments with an osteopath, homeopath and nutritionist? Did I mention, too, that after two rounds of vaccinations, even as her immune system was fully compromised by high-dosage steroids, she was never vaccinated again? I firmly believe that without these complementary therapies, the refusal of vaccinations and a diet rich in whole foods, she'd either be dead or far more compromised than she is today.

Without Ray and all the people who are working so diligently to research cannabis, Sophie would also still be seizing.

*Please humor my repeating this stuff over and over if you've read it, over and over. I still get new readers and emails weekly asking for information. Every now and then, I feel the urge to evangelize a bit. 

Cicer, the Latin word for chickpeas

or chicken pox.

Yes. Oliver has it. His behavior all week has been the sort that drives the best of us completely batshit crazy. Yesterday, he got into the car with a litany of complaints that included bumps on his head, a sore throat and now a bump on his back. I rolled my eyes (inwardly) and told him to climb up front so that I could take a look while we waited in the carpool line for Henry. When I lifted up his shirt, I literally gasped and then he burst out crying, sore afraid, as they say in the good book. When I told him that it looked like chicken pox, he cried harder until I told him to calm down and we'd call the doctor.

I called the doctor and then raced through rush-hour traffic on a Friday in Los Angeles so that I could get there before it closed where we stood on the grass outside the office in the shiny sun while a couple of sweet nurses came outside and took a look so as not to spread the pox in the office.

Then came the throat swab to rule out strep. Or perhaps I should say that then came the electro-shock therapy to the genitals such was the drama that ensued. My boys literally go to the pediatrician for well-child check-ups every other year and thus are completely and utterly oblivious to the goings-on at the doctor's. They are not vaccinated because of a family history of neurological complications and are treated by a homeopath and an osteopath (in addition to said pediatrician) when they need what I call "tune-ups." I should probably add in here in case you're a new reader that I am not averse to vaccinations but after careful and sometimes agonized consideration, we decided that we couldn't risk the seizure factor and received full support from our pediatrician. But I digress --

Oliver freaked out when the nurse inserted the swab. If I told you that he screamed and cried and shouted I am going to die and punched the nurse and kicked her shins, I would only be telling you the half of it. Now I'm going to tuck it into the tiny recesses of my long-term memory.

The strep test was negative, but Oliver does have a raging case of chicken pox. My immediate thought (beyond sympathy for the Big O and not a little guilt at being so aggravated by his recent grumpiness) was, of course, what about Sophie? Chicken pox is a disease of the central nervous system and the potential for complications and/or extreme discomfort for Sophie weighs heavy on my mind. The pediatrician said that we would start her on a cycle of acyclovir if we noticed anything at all. Please God, let her already have been exposed in her life and have developed antibodies.


If you pray, pray for that. If you don't pray, send that thought to the universe. If you don't believe in anything, cross your fingers and will it.

My next thought was how short-tempered I'd been all week with Oliver, whom I'd believed to be batshit crazy and not actually suffering from a cruel and uncomfortable central nervous system virus. I told Oliver that I was so sorry -- so, so sorry. Who knew?

My next stop was our beloved naturopathic physician who just happened to be in the office and who wrote down a list of supplements and immune-enhancements for each child to begin taking immediately. That's the photo you see above. Dr. C also prescribed a remedy for Oliver and calmed me down with his gentle voice and confidence.

Parenting isn't for the faint of heart -- but you already knew that. When the going gets tough, I pour a shot of frozen lemon vodka and call it a day.