Cannabis gives 4-year-old a shot at life after family's cross-country move

Health

Cannabis gives 4-year-old a shot at life after family’s cross-country move

Maggie Selmeski and her family are what have become known as “medical marijuana refugees,” as they came to Colorado from Tennessee in pursuit of legalized pot after finding that it was the only effective treatment for Maggie’s rare form of epilepsy, known as “intractable” epilepsy, which can cause her to have up to 500 seizures a day. When Maggie was just 4 months old, doctors told her parents, Shawn and Rachael, that their daughter probably wouldn’t live very long, thus beginning a frantic period of trying countless pharmaceuticals in hopes of giving Maggie a shot at having some quality of life, but nothing worked. As Maggie’s condition worsened and she lost all voluntary movement, Rachael’s search eventually led her to Cannabis sativa, or medical marijuana — and evidence that it had been found to reduce and control seizures, even in children.

Since making the move from their small, tight-knit Christian community in Tennessee to Colorado, where they could legally obtain a drug called Charlotte’s Web, a form of medical marijuana, Maggie has come to now suffer from only 15 to 20 seizures a day — a marked improvement — and has begun preschool. She is also beginning to express herself, which she could not do before, due to the effects of the medical marijuana patch she now wears daily and an oil she takes orally. And the Selmeskis aren’t the only parents who have had success with medical marijuana as an effective epilepsy treatment for a child. Nine-year-old Charlotte Figi — the little girl for whom Charlotte’s Web oil is named — found marked improvement in her Dravet syndrome, a form of epilepsy, as a result of medical marijuana, even after other forms of traditional treatment had failed. Yet there are major lessons to be learned from Maggie’s story, and the placebo effect is always a concern.